Are you listening?

The other day while I was reading and I came across a quotation from the famous American medical hypnotist Milton Erickson concerning the difference between ordinary waking states and trance states especially deep trance.

.. The subject in a deep trance functions in accordance with the unconscious understandings independently of the forces to which his conscious mind ordinarily responds; he behaves in accordance with the reality which exists in the given hypnotic situation for his unconscious mind. Conceptions memories and the ideas constitute his reality world; he is in a deep trance. The actual external environment reality with which he is surrounded is relevant only insofar as it is utilized in the hypnotic situation. (Erikson Deep Trance and its induction)

I thought that this perfectly summed up the state of mind that a musician in full flow of playing finds himself and this is why it is so difficult at times to truly intellectualise what makes a musician give a great performance because the performing musician will often not be able to tell you what it is that is happening.

I have often found that some pupils who are highly intellectual find learning music at very challenging. Many things that they aspire to seem to not make sense and they seem to get to this point after exploring all the chords and scales and techniques and still they find the holy grail of the great performance evades them.

Yet when you tell them that they need to get in touch with their feelings and to listen to the music inside them (because the unconscious processes many, many times more data than the intellect) they try to rationalise what I say and think about it when they really just need to listen.

I think that if you want to be like a great talent you need to travel a similar path to them. So if your heroes worked things out by ear so should you, if your hero became a great sight reader, so should you, because what is going on in the unconscious of the artist is what makes the difference and although we can discover where that person has travelled to by our intellect we cannot visit that land unless we walk their path. The reason for this is, as Erickson says, is that the reality of someone in a deep trance (which is where any performer is) is in the world of the unconscious.

Over the last few weeks Keith Richards has been on the radio and TV a number of times being interviewed. Now if there is someone who plays from the heart and not the head it is his ‘Keithness’ bless him!  Not only does he confound the medical profession that he is still with us physically but he will continue to confound the music intellectuals on how to play the perfect rock groove even with his extreme arthritis that he has in his hands.

I am sure that his answer is not to think about it just plug in and play.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk  three days of rock fun in a band

Setting up as a teacher, What Why and How...

What?

We are in very strange times, good for opportunity and change but also for uncertainty about where the economy is going and jobs.

If you have a skill in this case music and if you are looking to earn more than the first place to look is at what you can do with it.

Also it is advisable to list all the other skills that you have either soft or hard.

Why?

 I believe that the world of employment will change to be unrecognisable in the next few years because of disruptive technologies and this will affect the middle class professionals in ways that were not foreseeable a short while ago and we need to be able to use the creative aspect of music because this will be an area that will be required.

There is a lateral shift here but in a nut shell we need people who can think the impossible because that is where technology will take us and I am saying that because that is what it has already done so more of the same really.

And the way to learn this lateral ability is through the arts and music is the easiest way into this for the mind in my opinion and for the purposes of this blog.

How?

Just start networking and maybe start teaching, song writing, and playing small gigs in people’s houses, in restaurants at parties, clubs or festivals. Do not wait until you are perfect there is no such thing just start and develop. Get things on the YouTube, remember that your recorded music may not make any money but it might get you work.

The set of videos are about getting started as a guitar teacher, however the same applies to any teaching so have a listen if you want to make some money and make a start.

The set of videos are here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXtSQpny2D8

Happiness is playing music; with others.

It seems that whenever I meet new people and they asked me what I do, they then tell me that they have a guitar or they used to play guitar but had to stop because they had a family and life got in the way, now they wished that they could start again.

Some of them romanticise about the times that they played in a band or they think about the guitar that they sold and all of them lament the fact that if they had carried on playing they would be really good by now.

One of the sad things in today’s world is that people spend many years training to do a job, going to university getting into debt only to find the job that they have secured through all their hard work they hate.

It does not bring them any happiness, the money might be useful but with the increase of the money coming in there is also an increase of the money going out.

I teach in a number of public schools and when you add up the cost of the two expensive cars the school fees for the children and the expensive house and the expensive holidays which they need in order to deal with the stress of the job that they do not like, they could easily afford to have a happier life by cutting back and focusing on the things that truly give them happiness.

The problem is that once you get used to a lifestyle and the rest of the family get used to your income then it is very difficult to extricate yourself from it. Sometimes your body does it for you by making you ill if you don’t heed those warnings the illness gets more serious.

So let’s do something about it, find some time to jam and have fun meeting other people, this could be an open mike night or could just be getting together with a few friends and making a bit of a noise. Think yourself back a little bit to when music really gave you happiness, invoke those memories and get some joy back into your life.

You begin to realise that many things that were told throughout your life were lies, like how important science and maths were to the detriment of the arts. You were taught that many things were so important but your life experience has told you otherwise because after learning them you never used again; like finding the area of rhombus or calculating the value of X and Y.

So use social media if you haven’t got enough friends who play, make new contacts by asking around and start a ban, book a gig and have some fun.

Vic

You can find information about blues camp by going to www.Bluescampuk.co.uk

Make Money, take the chance

If you want to be able to make money from music like any form of art you will have to look at the opportunities as they present themselves.

It is so easy to get trapped in a form of thinking that is restrictive and this becomes the norm, so for instance if you were thinking about a lessons  just a half an hour of passing on facts then you are missing an opportunity to expand their experience. For the pupil to go without you offering anything else that lays beyond the standard music format then you are going to be caught in an economic trap that you set for yourself.

You really need to be able to offer something different for instance, sound engineering or guitar maintenance and repair, song writing, performance skills etc.  If you have a studio create experiences that excite pupils to be more involved.

Artists often forget that the general public are willing to pay a lot for interesting experiences such as training programs workshops etc. which could be in or out of the country for themselves or their children. Parents will pay a lot of money for their children’s education which they may not for themselves.

It is my belief that the teaching of music and the arts will become increasingly more important as education moves along in this very uncertain world that we are now entering.   Future generations will require lots of creative thinking and not so much of the factual education style that has been used up to now; the world is moving is so fast into the unknown.

Vic

check out video setting up as a teacher https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXtSQpny2D8