Hustle, magic, music and create.

Is the only way to find yourself as a musician now is to throw caution to the wind and do what musicians did in the past and get out there and hustle or do magic?

This is a little bit of a thought experiment where we look at the prospect of the media control gradually killing music. We thought it was the record companies that were controlling us but actually it was bigger than that it was social.

When I started in music I was told that it was a ridiculous idea to think that one could make money as a musician but now we have courses on it as if there is a career path, no, it does not have a career path; it is more like the entrepreneur or gambler, the risk taker, the chancer. How do you teach that in college? Here is how you write a hit song! Rubbish, you might be able to analyse the hit song and do something like that but what about the anomalies of which there are many in music and art they not only break the rules but they are so frequent that they are the rule.

So let us look at this another way for a change; look at the trader the person looking for the idea the trade that will make the money. For this we will look into the world of chaos magic, the strange world of the crazy, the impossible (in scientific terms) but the growing realm of the magician.

The West accounts for about let us say 6% of the world population and in this part of the world who apparently believe in the rational, logical modern way of seeing things and then there is the rest of the world where the majority of the population believe in the other world whether that is the mystical, spiritual or magical. 

Now the view point in that non-western world is the reality of this world can be changed radically by some form of intervention that bends or breaks the way the world works. So for our thought experiment let us say that the majority of the world actually thinks like this and it is us who are out of step.

Now let us ask a simple question, are we as artists limited by rational thinking? I would say that we are. It is in the word ration after all we do not say let us think abundantly. I would also ask, are people practical and functional people in other countries? And the answer to that is yes whether you agree or not with their beliefs. So why do they believe in something that does not work? 

I would suggest that it does, whether it is real or not. What holds us in the west is what believe is possible. If we believe it is not we are casting a spell on ourselves? If we believe it is true then the possibility and probability changes if that is the case and that is why we need to hustle because we want to nudge probability in our direction and that is one of the ideas of chaos magic that you want to look for the small victories that encourage strange synchronicities like the call that you sensed was coming, the person that you meet by chance, this may be the real things of ‘magical thinking’ instead of what we normally think of which is winning the lottery. 

We as artists need those breaks just like the gambler and the entrepreneur so think radically look for opportunity do something strange that courts that possibility, try something that you believe in or something that you could believe in, for instance if you have a favourite artist living or dead ask them in a ritualistic way to help. You can even try someone that is a character in a song like Ziggy Stardust, it worked for Bowie!  if you do not believe that Bowie was into magic then think again, if you like the Vikings call on their deities maybe use runes to draw an intention make a weird symbol that implies a meaning similar to the symbols that Led Zeppelin used on the fourth album or the one that Prince used you know the one that he had as a guitar.

If you want to go deeper have a look at the Sergeant Pepper album and check out the people in the collage, find the mystics and magicians in there and read up on them

Ladies and gentlemen I give you the circus of the unreal, let us leave the desert of the real behind and let us create by changing our minds………….

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk  three days of playing in a band

When Bach climbed out of bed..

‘There is a story of a student who once asked Bach how he created so many wonderful melodies. The question seemed to fox Bach. He is supposed to have replied that he did not know. He simply stepped on them when he climbed out of bed.’

The story about JS Bach is a recurring theme which you can find whenever you speak to a great artist and musician about how they do what they do. The recurring refrain is one of, ‘I don’t know’ or ‘That’s easy I just do whatever comes into my head’. There seems to be a detachment from the intellectual process that we assume they have been using to a more instinctive process.

It was also true that JS Bach did not compose from the keyboard but from his head, the idea that a sound could be fully formed in your mind seems impossible to those who cannot do it, however the point that many of the musical greats had this ability to just know something without having to find it is also common.

I think that the map that we are using is created by the way that we learn and it is not the same as the map that people with this type of ability use. The unconscious ability to create is something rarely discussed in the education system and in many cases as in maths it is actively discouraged by saying that the correct answer is still invalid if your workings are not shown. However one of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century Srinivasa Ramanujan did not know how he achieved his answers believing them to come from a goddess so the workings are more to do with the evidence of the journey than of the arrival, the arts need more of the medieval aspect of revelation where a piece of work can arrive fully formed.

There is a way to develop a skill of listening, ok it may not produce a work like the St Matthew Passion but it will bring out the creativity that one has. You can just start by listening in your mind to a tune that you already know and then have it appear with a different instrument playing that melody. For instance imagine hearing Happy Birthday, first of all being sung and then hear it again being played by trumpet. The next step is to make up a melody as a variation of something that you know, because those things are already in your head from what you have already experienced and you mind will present sounds that conform to various protocols otherwise it will not sound musical. So change Happy Birthday developing the tune in different ways in your mind.

I encourage pupils to be led by what they hear and not just by muscle memory or by what they regurgitate. I think this is very important because the unconscious responds much quicker and more efficiently to hearing and feeling than it does by seeing. So sing ideas, play with the ideas, be crazy with them, be playful and imagine yourself into the space that melodies come free and you are an open vessel to musical ideas that are already there one just needs to let them out.

Vic Hyland

www.bluescampuk.co.uk rock summer school

Lady Luck

But is he lucky?

One of the factors that seems to be overlooked in the success of musicians is that of luck.

We do not believe in luck in the way that we did, and that has changed within my life time, however in every interview that I do for the forthcoming podcast with successful musicians it comes up again and again; the chance meeting, the odd intervention, the unusual conversation etc.

Now I am sure that waiting for luck by sitting at home is not going to endear her to you but going out courting her obviously does. Lady Luck however fickle does seem to play a part in most people’s experience of the lucky break that they are looking for.

There is a quote which is, ‘The harder I work the luckier I get’, which I am sure is not quite complete because it could be a little bit saying, ‘The harder I dig the more of the world I will see’. Maybe better said that, ‘The more connections I make the more the doors I open’. So for developing the contacts and opening possibilities and then focusing on the short term (if you look at the long-term you may miss what is right in front of you) may focus you to become lucky.

The quote at the beginning from Napoleon was one I quoted before as his reply given to an officer about promoting someone to Marshall. So obviously Napoleon believed in luck or good fortune and why would he not as most soldiers and sailors certainly believe in fate in some form?

So let us do what is necessary to attract luck, we could look back to see when it happened before, and give yourself the same ideas the conditions that are favourable at the time. Maybe lady luck will shine on you again.

Remember it is not about why psychologically it works, does it? And it seems for the ones who believe in it, it does.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.ukthe rock summer school

The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. Audre Lorde

When it comes to creativity, music is a construct; the notes the scales the chords have been made. Someone decided on them, they took sounds and labelled them and you are doing them as dictated.

So how do you fix that well you cannot by doing the same thing with the same ideas because it is the master’s tools and the master’s house literally. Want something new? Do something different with different tools.

The thing that traps you will never be the thing that releases you; you need new tricks and tools for that. So if you are creating a piece and it is getting boring then you will need something different to break it.

Language creates a cage and to escape you will have to do something else, if you are using logic, free yourself by using myth. If you are using myth then use logic and if that does not work make up the words or use another language. This has been done many times by the great and the good. Many great thinkers had another alphabet from Leonardo’s writing in mirror image to Hildegard of Bingen and John Dee having an angelic alphabet.

In the creative process of writing songs or coming up with new business ideas lateral techniques are often needed in the early stages to free oneself of the traps. Edward de Bono’s books on lateral thinking took us into a weird world of words with new meanings such as Po being the word that sat between yes and no. This is similar to the idea of suspending disbelief where you do not need to believe in something you just need to allow it to be possible.

Some of the lateral thinking techniques involved taking random words out of dictionaries and thinking of the implications and feelings associated with those words then being reapplied to the problem that had been presented. It was allowing the mind to find another way back to the world of logic and reality from the unconscious.We can postulate that there is no such thing as reality only structures that we perceive as real.  In other words no scale, no chord, no song structures only things that appear familiar.

One of the cages that we are trapped in regarding science is that anything that lays in the unproven cannot possibly be real, the problem with that is that the area that the mind inhabits is getting smaller and smaller. I see this a lot in the way that people are treated for anything that lies outside of the ‘normal’ aspect of mental behaviour.

This is covers any of the traits that are unusual be that Asperger’s, bipolar or just having an active imagination and for all of these there is some sort of chemical cosh that can be used to make them ‘normal’.  The problem with this is that we are probably losing all of our artists and creative thinkers that way which will have unforeseen circumstances in the future.

To get out of that cage start looking at people who are considered ill or unusual and ask is there something that they can bring that is that is in real benefit to humanity? Let us not try to fix so many things let us break them; instead of trying to cage every bird we should let them fly and be birds.

This may be the only way that we can dismantle the rich man’s palace and share the proceeds amongst everyone.

 Vic

 www.bluescamp.co.uk

And yet you cannot find the new words if you do not shatter the old words – Carl Jung

During the summer I did a number of seminars about songwriting at festivals using techniques such as cutup which was pioneered by William S Burroughs. This is the technique that David Bowie made famous in a documentary in the 1970’s which described how he wrote songs. There are lots of possibilities with this technique; the idea is to allow a creative approach which is accidental and synchronistic in order to come up with ideas. Apart from the now famous act of cutting up magazines into phrases and you can do crazy things like create new words out of old, playing around with the meaning of words.

One technique takes famous phrases and then by twisting those around making them mean something else. Sometimes to create something new or have a new approach in the way that you invent ideas or run your business requires you to break your existing ideas to do something different maybe by doing the reverse of what you are currently doing.

So instead of teaching one-to-one you should teach in groups, instead of teaching from your own house you should travel to other people. Sometimes doing something completely different for a time may open up other possibilities for you.

Doing something habitually is not necessary always going to lead to a good place, so much of our behavior including the choice of words is a habit which needs to be shaken up for change to happen.

There has been a lot of research into language and how it frames thinking, is it possible that thinking in one language can make you comprehend certain things that another language will not? It is interesting that Carl Jung, Wilhelm Reich and Sigmund Freud were all German (or Austrian) whereas the existentialists tended to be French was it possible that for deep analytical thinking you had to be German or certainly speak the German language because that deep analytical thinking is difficult in French? Maybe French tend towards a more poetic lyrical thought process which is fine for existentialists.

Frank Zappa made an interesting point that rock music was more suited to Germanic based language than Latin-based language and I would agree with him on that. So use language wisely because it could be the road to success in any venture from the marketing of an idea to the lyrical design of a song and it only takes one song to make your fortune.

And if you cannot find the words invent them.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk three days of playing in a rock band with the tricks of the trade

What to do if things get difficult and the work dries up.

Sometimes things get rather tight and we need to make opportunities happen. As a friend of mine said once, ‘the trick to money was having some’.

So what to do?

1. First seeing the problem coming from a distance. Easier said than done but some of these things will take time so give yourself time for things to happen and act fast.

2.Think of a number of possibilities that open the floodgates to bring working, sell things, do other related stuff for instance sell equipment, do more lessons, get gigs, do talks, fix instruments for people and get your name out there.

4. Lock them together; does one thing lead to another? For instance a new pupil needs a new guitar, books, others to play along with. Create a chain reaction; later they can go to your gigs et cetera

5. Can you broaden your area of market, travel more, teach on the Internet, work at another school college et cetera

6. Peter Drucker the business writer said that there are three ways to expand business all other things are an expense. You need more customers, who buy more, and more frequently. Think about this it is really the only way

7. Build alliances, there are people that you can help and by extension they can help you. Cooperative ideas of offers from other businesses to one another can really do amazing things. We can expand on this greatly in another article

8. Referrals possibly the best way to expand. Ask then reward.

Remember the best time to fix the roof is when the sun is shining. So build up your resources when things are good to tide you through the rough weather. Think guns and butter; hard resources versus soft buy things that have value instead of things that melt away. Think about this when you’re buying things have they resale value? Interesting areas here are second guitars and second-hand music books that you can sell or even rent. In the case of guitars this is a really good way of trading because it doesn’t matter how battered they become or are they just need to be playable and then they become a continuous form of income.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk next year’s camp will be in the last week of July so get in early.

Keith Richards once said in an interview that songs were out there all around you, all you needed was to reach out and grab one.

 I like this idea along with the possibility that we do not have thoughts but thoughts have us. How else to explain the memes and ideologies that surface and then infect people from the great political thoughts and theories to what we become obsessed with and makes the news. I often ponder what happened to the flasher and the streaker, it seemed literally to expose itself in the 1970s. They all just go away? What possessed people? Some form of trickster maybe?

Often turning things around, thoughts having us making thoughts manifest and having some form of agency or spirit is powerful as it breaks the creative sensor and allows us to write. I like the NLP phrase about ‘it doesn’t matter if it’s not real, does it work?’

We need to open our minds for new ideas to enter like the muses of old to infect us, we need to be irrational willing to take ideas and turn them around; black needs to be white, white needs to be black the unreal needs to be the real and the real needs to be the unreal.

Scientific method is great but it is a tool, but scientism is like believing in the redemptive quality of an electric drill. I believe in the redemptive nature of the guitar (but I’ve seen the light, glittering of the machine heads).

Maybe we can change our lives by writing songs, following the idea of life mimicking art which is an idea that has infected people before but are strange examples of musicians and artists whose lives started to follow work they had produced. This has happened to me on a number of occasions which is taken me from ‘that is funny’, to, ‘that is odd’, to, ‘that is crazy’ to, ‘I had better right songs’.

The old blues men knew that songs had power to change things and that is why most old blues songs were active in things being able to change. In other words if my baby don’t love me no more, I know her sister will.

Blues camp this week and it is the 10^th anniversary. Lots of fun……………..

Some people be featured on an album but they don’t know it yet.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk

Give something back that hurts a little – Steve Martyn

In this society of risk adverse behaviour this is something which we have to embrace in order to achieve anything that moves us beyond where we currently are. Our society is full of legislation, attitudes and belief systems which move us away from anything that hurts or is even uncomfortable.

The foods that are good for us tend not to be the most tasty, certainly not the sweetest so that has led us to obesity and all the diseases that attach themselves to that condition and those which weirdly are a form of malnutrition due to us not consuming a wide enough range of foodstuffs, considering that we are in an affluent society we eat less diverse but more in a rationalised choice.

To become a great musician or an athlete you have to put in the time forsaking other things that may be sweeter in your life, like the computer game, or all the partying (if you have a life). The hours that a good musician puts in hurt and the fact that playing the guitar for three or four hours hurts your fingers and stretches the muscles to the point of cramp let alone the disappointment of not getting it right which does your brain in.

In a way it is a form of courtship with the spirit of music and creativity and should be viewed as such. There is no plan that works in courting a prospective lover you may know what you think you are doing but unless you adapt the plan to fit the person you are not going to get very far.

Making an offering or gift in courtship must be something that has value to you and them not something that you actually want to get rid of. When you give something like that it hurts a little.

In the past the great artists and players did not have anything to lose by taking a risk because life was shit anyway so it was worth the gamble. But from our perspective of comfortable, convenient lifestyles these risks are not undertaken, to our detriment. The reality is death is going to come and get you anyway so you may as well make the most of it while you are here.

A number of the young pupils that I teach come out with remarks such as ‘there will be a cure for cancer soon’ (I remember that being said when I was a young)’ In 20 to 30 years’ time we will be travelling to Mars et cetera et cetera. All this stuff is a dream to keep us going because when we get to Mars it will not be as good as we were told. it will be like it has always been, sold to people the suckers that will be populating it will be like the people that populated America and took it away from the indigenous people.

They will be indentured labour, people that are basically slaves bought and sold by land owners, that is how it was is done in the past and that’s how the future will play out but this time it will look like you have got a work contract with a big multinational company.

Think of the things that you’ve been promised in your life and they never quite work out to the utopian vision that you’re given and yet we fall for it over and over again. Why is that? If we looked at the hard realities and realised that anything that was worth having we have to work for and pay for in sweat and a bit of pain. So ladies and gentlemen pick up your guitars and play just like yesterday get down on your knees and pray, we won’t get fooled again.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk three days playing in a band learn the tricks of the trade.

The Germans know how to get the dust out of cushions

In the pursuit of the weird I spent some time in Berlin with a yoga group. As with all things creative I find that there is something to be learnt from other disciplines that can shine a light onto the musical world and on top of that I am looking for interesting venues to run Bluescampuk projects from in the next couple of years.

I have never been to Germany before and the possibility of going to the Kreutzburg area of the city was a great possibility as the graffiti art bohemian aspect seemed pretty cool to me.

The Germans seem very concerned with making sure that the rules are followed and that all things are undertaken seriously including following the instructions for the dynamic meditation that we found ourselves involved in. The deep rapid breathing was fine and then we came to the section where we were supposed to let it out. At that point the room was full of Germans beating the living crap out of the cushions and pillows and screaming at the soft furnishings. It all reminded me of Richard Bandler’s description of meeting Fritz Pearls for the first time. Pearls was the originator of the Gestalt therapy which Bandler described as someone beating the shit out of a harmless looking chair whilst the assailant screamed insults at the furniture as though it was his father.

I think that playing and writing music is a good release of the inner demons and is more beneficent to the furnishings of the house. I quite like the resident spirits of my cushions and chairs and I am sure they are happier that way with me serenading them to happiness than beating them into submission whilst I undergo some form of primal therapy.

Berlin outside of the Yoga Centre was fun and I enjoyed the vibe a great deal and I would certainly go back there, not so sure about the music in Germany in general as there seems to be a time warp quality to the listening from American AOR to retro reggae and punk mixed with some Kraftwork style stuff .

The euro pop style is also still quite a thing and it makes me realise how we can never again write a Euro Vision winner we just do not have the mindset for it.

The history of music and its impact on government control is something that we in the West find difficult to understand but in East Germany music was one of the main contributors to the fall of the communist regime.

Punk was one of the driving forces in youth culture that absorbed the Stasi and it trying to control the minds of the young. Enormous risks were undertaken by teenagers not just listening to the music but smuggling bands in from the West and forming their own bands and playing in secret places often churches in the East.

That relationship with music that we had in the UK in the 60s for change has lost much of its power that needs to be re found in the music that we create, but maybe without the Germanic sensibility.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk

We trade shelter for comfort. – Martin Shaw

Discomfort certainly makes you remember things; go back to some your earliest memories and they may be something like falling of your bike or having an accident which hurt. If you reflect upon those times you will remember in detail elements such as what somebody said to you, what the weather was like and what you were wearing. All this is pretty amazing because you may have only been five at the time and it doesn’t matter how old you become you still remember that event. I would say that music created with some sort of trade of discomfort has more impact the music that is not traded in that way.

The trouble with modernity and the problem with technology is they exacerbate the human trait for taking the easy and most comfortable way, it was never always like this, once being creative went with the need to suffer for your art. Now I do not say this lightly because it sounds a little tongue in cheek if not insensitive to the likes of the great artists who die young.

The above quote from Martin Shaw a great storyteller and myth rememberer is in the trading of shelter for comfort something dies in us because they lack meaning. The trading of something that causes a little pain really connects you with the work.

Maybe this is the problem we have in society that we all become a bit soft and we do not like to take a risk because it makes us feel uncomfortable. I am not suggesting we will go around whipping ourselves(or maybe we should have a whip- round) but I think that we need to be more aware in a tactile sense of the world around us without ‘skin in the game’ nothing has any real value.

Getting out of a financial fix involves pain, changes in society nearly always do, changing habits that lead to environmental damage involve us being uncomfortable with feelings like ‘why spend so much money on personal care products’when you are eating rubbish and you are overweight and no one really cares about you anyway, kind of uncomfortable.

Think of how much money you would save if you could embrace being uncomfortable about what you wear, and what someone else thinks of you. Think about how that would affect your work if you could embrace that maybe you may not need to work in order just to make money maybe just doing something you enjoy.

The problem is that we have been conditioned to look for comfort and not shelter when we get a car we are encouraged to get the one that shows status same with holidays how many of us have gone to Disney because the children have to go.

The best time for contempory music seems to be when things are difficult, the aftermath of the war which culminates in rock n roll and the blues boom and then the sixties, the rise of the heavy rock and metal in the depressed 70’s then punk, hip hop etc. Compare this to when things become more comfortable the real feeling is lost again, the music becomes complex but lifeless.

Remember a good song is a good song on just a guitar and vocal we don’t need the latest gizmo, or the London Philharmonic Orchestra .Whatever it is that you can envisage keep it simple, try to keep your life simple for instance when you teach you do not need to teach in a fully equipped recording studio. If you have one fine but it is not a prerequisite to becoming a good teacher.

So let’s get uncomfortable and go and create something amazing.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk Rock Summer school for all instruments ………

Magic has been drained out of history by the historians. Gordon White

There has been a fundamental omission in the telling of the past not just our past history but also in the way that we understand music and it is the role of magic within that story. It is difficult for us to reconnect with the fundamental belief in magic that our predecessors had and that it was infused in everything that they did and by extension music and art was used to connect with this otherworldliness. I would say that today music that is disconnected from this otherness has no inner energy this is why root styles of music frequently have to come back into the popular music arena in order to re-energise even if those musical styles are disguised as punk or grunge there is something innately visceral and otherworldly about those sorts of animal.

One thing that could be said about modern pop music is there is nothing really animal about it. It is so computerised and quantised that any essence of energy has been removed and replaced by something sterile, however if the computer becomes the servant and not the master the essence of the DJ producer can be bound into the songs, dance is a good example of this. I think the deciding point here is, were any risks taken? Producing a song by a Rihanna or a Katy Perry maybe more a case of not getting it wrong because of the big budgets involved.

We find it very difficult to be able to think in a mediaeval style because we have been told that the many of the things that they believed in are rubbish but obviously they did not think that, however if you ask yourself a question why something like ritualistic behaviour and magic systems seem to have been unchanged over a period of 2000 years then you have to ask why did they keep doing something that did not work? The logical answer to that is it did work but is only us that have rid ourselves of one of those tools from the toolbox.

I am suggesting that by looking back at styles that may influence us musically and getting to the root of what it is that drives it we can reconnect with what the music is all about and derive something from it for ourselves, if only to reanimate the music that we play. You do not have to believe only suspend your disbelief to lock into something. I would suggest Blues or Flamenco or the English folk music tradition and see what sort of weirdness you can find in there; Mojo’s, Dances of the spider, impossible tasks asked of ex-lovers etc. pull on that tread a little and see where it takes you.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk Summer school for budding rock stars.

Going for a mix and funny money

What is better 30 minute lesson for £20 or an hour lesson for £35?

Today we are entering the world of funny money where things are expressed in ways more attractive to the punter and better for you.

How many ads for insurance have you heard that state 'for only 50p a day you can have....'? If they asked for £180 for the same thing you might reject the idea straight off.

How have you positioned your teaching? If you are little Minnie's guitar teacher and it is a hobby that she does you are going to be cut out very quickly when the funds run low.

I see lots of people do this and you really need to position yourself as something special in her life that enriches it gives her skills that will be super valuable in the world that is coming. So things to look at,

Various payment levels that encourage people to pay for lessons in blocks and in advance.

Flexibility in the payments cash, bank transfer, cards etc.

Lesson flexibility; do they have to be every week? Could they be also be every two weeks or every month?

Encouragement for arrangements that you want; so make the time of lessons that you do not want more expensive.

Paying for a block of lessons being better financially for the pupil.

In all cases think yourself into the shoes of the person that you are dealing with and do things in such a way that helps them while helping you. So if they want lessons every two weeks well fine let them do that if that lesson would have been half an houra week then make it an hour a fortnight

The other angle/aspect that I like to do is trading skills, like lessons for computer maintenance and back up or help with book keeping. You can trade anything for lessons just think outside the box on this. Obviously not all lessons can be like this but several can be. I have currently have someone who teaches me yoga, someone who does computer work for me and someone who roadies and does other work around the house and garden when needed.

Let us be creative about what we do and how we trade that skill, there is more to business than money, originally there was no money and that means that people who have no money but have a skill or something that is an asset like a musical instrument that you can take in payment or any item for that matter then you are opening up the market to people that may not have the funds for lessons but have something else like a skill.

I find this a liberating way to think being far more democratising than just dealing with the currency that is imposed on us.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk music summer school in the amazing Tonbridge School in Kent UK

More animal

I’m aspiring to produce the “uncivilised” writing we called for in the Dark Mountain manifesto back in 2009. I think that's more about style and execution than subject matter. If your writing becomes too controlled, not chaotic enough, then you’ve lost one of the fundamental elements of what it means to be an animal in the world. The idea is to write like a mountain hare—or like a mountain. What would it be like to attempt to write from the animal in you, and from the land around you, rather than from the rational, well behaved, civilized person that you are trained to be? Our writing is too civilized now. It’s too rational and realist, too middle class and urban. The kind of stuff that we lay out in mainstream culture as the height of great literature is not saying anything about the state of the world. It’s not saying anything about crumbling civilizations or climate change or extinction, or the complexity of being human in the midst of all that. It’s fake. I’m trying not to be fake,- Paul Kingsnorth

What does this say about the music we are producing in this society? If anything it is far too controlled and not chaotic enough, however every now and again musical styles such as punk, grunge, and in the 50s rock ‘n’ roll appeared out of nowhere to turn the musical establishment upside down. It reintroduced the animal into the music that is most definitely needed today. Okay lots of music on the fringes have this animal characteristic but this certainly does not appear within the mainstream currently, maybe that is about to change.

Much of the animal nature comes from the landscape, a sort of ancestral viewpoint, the blues changed its home a number of times and changed its name. From the London streets songs to the Mississippi and Chicago and then back again to London each time manipulating its identity but retaining its animal nature.

The challenge for us as teachers is to keep hold of this essence, both of the music and of the person as they are learning. The challenge for us as performers is to keep the raw essence when we create so that it is retained as we edit and record or write it down.

We need to re-introduce that danger and risk into the work that we do, however doing normally a job does produce a series of restrictions which are matrix like. Neo had to conform to the morays of his job before finally being abducted by agent Smith and his cronies. Seems like a suitable metaphor to the challenges of being an artist in the modern work that its environment presents us.

However the modern work environment is going to rapidly change in the next few years so we may have our opportunity thrust upon us to be radical and animal.

Vic 

www.bluescampuk.co.uk three days of being immersed in music in this UK summer school

Sometimes jumping ship and taking risk is the way ahead

One of the questions that you will ask yourself is, ‘How long can I continue the type of work I am doing’. If you have a very busy schedule of teaching at schools generally what happens is during the term time you will be incredibly busy but when you get to the holiday periods the work drops off, which is ok if you have other things to do or you have enough money to take a long break.  However the problem can be that due to inconsistencies projects and other ideas do not get completed in the down times and therefore end up being on the backburner.

Gigging can get you in a similar dilemma that you are not earning enough by playing to develop new income streams and if you are busy you do not have the time to make something else happen.

Sometimes jumping ship and taking risk is the way ahead

This of course means that one has got to make a success of the it makes me me reflect on how I set up in the first place which was by taking risk and leaving a job and getting involved in teaching and performing. Things were a little bit easier then and I was blissfully naive which as something I have discussed in the past as being one of the important ingredients required for success.

One of the problems of working for yourself in this manner is there is not a career trajectory, there is no promotion to be had only new ideas to be acted upon of which many do not succeed. Often cited by people who are successful entrepreneurs is that for every 10 ideas that they have only three of them survive and succeed the other seven fail but the successes outweigh the failures.

So I am currently reviewing my jumping off point and hopefully relatively safe landing.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk

Music is a game best played with others but okay to be played alone

If music is your business, and you make work become more of a game you can get some the love back into it.

Some of the membership forums about teaching in which I am involved have horror stories about the pupil who is walking disaster or the pushy parent wanting their kid to do grade 10 or whatever, my solution to this is to view it as a game and have a little bit of fun with that.

For instance if you get someone turn up who has not done any practice, which let’s face it is incredibly common, think about the game that you are playing; which is they turn up and pay you to spend time playing guitar. So help them with their practising and take their money and tell them that they need an extra lesson and get them working towards an exam and get them focused.

The pushy parent game is; ‘yes they can do those grades but for them to have a good chance of passing they will need to do twice the amount of lessons’. Do not concern yourself with the well-being psychologically of the pupil because if they are under pressure with your guitar lessons they will be under greater pressure for everything else they do for the rest of the lives from their parents, your guitar lessons a drop in the ocean.

With the disorganised schools and colleges play the trickster game of ‘can we do some catch up lessons’ where pupils share the lessons and in the mix you can catch up the lesson numbers that way. I also call this the’ statistics game’, governments do it all the time, for you are just doing this because the pupils have examinations coming up and you need to get the time in to cover for errors made by the school ( that makes you look very good in everyone’s eyes )

Pupils turn up without music, do improvisation today, without an instrument, use yours, do some song writing, history of music etc  it is easier to deal with problems if you do not see them as problems but as chances.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk come and play for three days get away from the family the job and the world………….

Teaching instruments at school and you turn up and your pupils are on a trip

Here is a short video about ways of lessening the effect of this event which unfortunately can be frequent especially in the summer term.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUS_Lqhx19I

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk learn to play music in a band for three days

Practice is the key to learning

What do we mean by practicing and how does that differ from playing?

Follow the link to the video for ideas of how to structure your practice and set targets that are achievable in a way that means that you progress

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

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk three days of learning to play in a band

Arguing on the internet does not make the list

However shit things get -and they will likely get shitter before they get better, which may not be in your lifetime- do not cut yourself off from the experience of joy. Just look at the top regrets of the dying. They regret not spending enough time at family gatherings or hiking in nature. Arguing on the internet doesn't make the list. Gordon White

Another thing that will not make the list is spending more time in the office, however when I drive to work in the morning and am frequently overtaken by daredevil drivers who are desperate to get to work, they drive as if going to see their lover in some illicit rendezvous instead of going to a stupid job that probably has no importance in some office staffed by people that they do not get on with.

How do we arrive at some pathetic attitude to life where 40% of the working population of the UK believe that their job has no importance? Not only that, but the job may not last in the technology consuming period that we are now entering.

When do we actually realise what is important surely it should be something that we teach our children? Children need skills such as carpentry, cookery, fixing things, building things, playing musical instruments, dancing, swimming etc. many of these skills contain some form risk like bush craft skills such as fire lighting and using tools and knives. The emphasis on life should be the pursuit of joy and happiness but the system is created in such a way that the focus is on doing what you are pressured to do and I think that for many it is an iron cage.

The ways this is done is through being told to do things that seem completely laudable but the setting that these things are set is the trick. Much is contextual, the devil is in the detail and the hypnosis is in the context, always be careful how things are said to you and how information is phrased, not the detail, more the context.

Things are set to get rather rocky, many things that we think have gone away like the banking crisis have not, there are serious problems with many currencies and political systems and this will become more evident as time goes on. Technology is exacerbating this not helping it; governments will not be able to keep the lid on it. For us as musicians and artists we need to use these skills to open up new possibilities in the way that we work and use our art, to make us happier and for the joy of people that we interact with whether as pupils or audience members.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk  Three days of playing in a band. Learn the tricks of the trade

Universal Basic Income

This will result in a proliferation of cheap, accessible goods, but it could also have psychological consequences. "I think universal basic income will be necessary, but the much harder challenge is: How will people then have meaning?" he says. "A lot of people derive meaning from their employment. If you're not needed, what is the meaning? Do you feel useless? That is a much harder problem to deal with. How do we ensure the future is a future that we want, that we still like?"

And here we are my friends to the purpose of music and the teaching of the arts, to give meaning to life and it will become more important. The above quote really puts into focus the inability of the education system to adapt to what is coming, not because of the teachers but because of government still trading in ideas that are to do with factory style thinking.

The idea of universal basic income (UBI) sounds a great idea; the problem I see is that the system that got us into this mess is now going to get us out of it?

The problem is about attitudes to wealth and ownership that goes back centuries and the theft of land from people and the environment and giving it to the favoured few. This keeps being revisited, whether it is the enclosures act, the taking of land from native peoples or the standing rock type theft of land use.

I am not sure whether the restrictions on what people can spend their money with UBI on is worth pondering here as it will probably be government designated things which will be cheaper and therefore things like learning a musical instrument independently may be problematic. Anyway it is a way off but not that far off as the effects are already being felt in the banking world of technology takeover. Some thinkers believe that this will be much bigger than the industrial revolution, think about that for a moment, BIGGER than the industrial revolution.

In principle UBI seems a good idea and to start with it might be if people can use the upside to create the time to learn something that adds something to their lives but the fall out of people having to reorient their assessment of meaning and their work will be difficult because that is how we have been programmed through education and social comment for decades if not centuries.

Even the way that we ‘work‘ using music will need to change. I have already made a percentage of my lessons being ‘time swaps’ where no money changes hands just skills. This includes computer and software repair and back up, yoga sessions and roadie-ing. Many art skills and therapy skills work well for this as it really adds value to people if you are swapping your teaching for their skill. Think of what you need doing; gardening, handyman, babysitting, and bookkeeping many aesthetic things that you would like that you might not have the money for; clothing, artwork for the house, interior design, photography, web design and hosting.

The solution for many of the problems that we are faced with is local, small governance, food supply etc. basically unplugging from the globalised grid of commerce as much as possible. This theory is the one driving local currencies and transition towns, use this idea for your teaching and work and give people meaning as well as yourself.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk three days of playing in a band learn the tricks from the ones who know.

Discomfort is the doorway that we have to pass through to enter a new mindscape.

Sometimes I find it very difficult to focus on a series of tasks that need to be taken to achieve a target. For instance I am currently working on an album which is taken a whole year to get the rhythm sections down and the basic structure of the songs to be organised. I am also attempting to update aspects of my website to include a membership section and on top of that I have a couple of very important gigs to organise which are rather different from the normal concerts that I do.

I keep finding myself delaying and obscuring tasks that I should be accomplishing by doing less important things, and although I am a really good list writer and target maker sometimes my mind takes me somewhere else.

I am sure this is something that all of us will find familiar, I see it as a rut that I am in. My particular rut could be considered as my comfort zone, the things that I am familiar are the things that get done first. I have noticed over the years that when I procrastinate it is always on the things I find uncomfortable and doing something can lead me into uncomfortable feelings about change. In NLP terms we need to make the stasis more uncomfortable than change so that we can move toward change. That however is easier said than done as the mind tends to trip you up finding things to do instead of the important things required.

So let me know of how you deal with making change and what works for you and maybe we can share notes.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk three days of playing in a band with the tricks of the trade

'That thing which your knowledge cannot eat’

‘Malidoma Patrice Somé the Dagara writer and teacher has written that in his language there is a word yielbougura that is quickly and inaccurately translated into English as mystery. He says that this word more accurately should be translated as ‘that thing which your knowledge cannot eat’. Here is an indigenous understanding of understanding and one our culture must learn mystery must have a proper place in learning.’ – Stephen Jenkinson.

Following on from the theme of a previous blog about mystery in knowing here is an example that other languages have a capacity for this.

The English language although rich in words has problems which manifest in unusual ways like expressing things like death. The verb ‘to die’ is an active verb which when expressed in the past tense becomes passive i.e. ‘they died’ whereas in the present ‘they are dying’. We think of time as a line hurtling into the future with no way of getting it back along with the dead, our dreams and memories. Stephen Jenkinson says that this may be why we say we have’ lost someone’ whereas in other cultures their dead are present and active in their life and in their language.

Sting says in a lyric

‘When words are hard to find,

The only cheques I’ve left unsigned,

From the banks of chaos in my mind,

And when their eloquence escapes me,

Their logic ties me up and rapes me.’

Language has a power that structures what we think, how we think and how we frame the world that we experience. What happens with music is that we can experience the world in a way that lies outside of our language. Ask an artist to explain their work and how they created it, it will not be long before they are struggling with language and grasping for metaphors, or they might say ‘I do not know’.

The title quotation is interesting in the concept that knowledge needs to be fed, I like that, especially that in the west we want information and knowledge and are hungry for it, to consume it, for the consumer society, in fact now we are in an information age are we not, or so we are told.

So what about music as a language, can it say something different that cannot be easily expressed in English? What type of connecting can we do with music that seems to transcend what we can do with logic? I draw a definition with poetry here because that can reach parts that literal language often cannot. This is worth considering as a musician and a teacher because we can make changes to ourselves and others and it can open a field of music therapy; for want of a better term.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk three days of playing in a rock band. Special rates this month for keyboard players and singers

Can you teach me to swim? Because, I am drowning……….

I am interested in the subtext of news stories and even the choice of which news story finds its way onto the TV, radio and now social media there are distinct patterns of what is acceptable, what is to be ridiculed and what is to be ignored. There is a strict code to what is deemed acceptable and not accept regarding other regimes and other forms of thinking. At the moment science is the new religion and seems not to be able to do any wrong even though many of the statements made by the media scientists are more a form of scientism than science.

One of the things I find interesting as I get older is that over time you notice a pattern of things that are so-called disproved or unscientific but seem to be very relevant as time goes on in some cases they even get approved what seems to go missing is the acceptance that the conventional rational aspect and it’s black swan event goes unchallenged.

As an example of this and I can quote many, is that of the health benefits of butter and margarine. For years we have been told margarine was better than butter we were barraged through the media about various margarine products that had health giving benefits by scientific research, all of this of course has been proven not to be true and the research was skewed somehow. People however have known for years that there was nothing wrong with butter or fats because if there was then the Inuit who eat large quantities of fish fat and whale blubber would not be as fit as were are the same goes for the French who cooked everything in butter and lard.

Now I see the same pompous attitude permeating other aspects of media reporting into the abstract and grey areas of the mind. Sometimes they can be health benefits from something that on the surface does not seem to work or certainly not in the lab but in the real world creates real change, one of those things may be homeopathy I have certainly seen some beneficial effects of homeopathy including the treatment of horses which were very successful.

I like to use the NLP phrase epithet ‘it’s not a case of whether it is true but more a case of if it works’ sometimes simply changing a link in the chain can make real progress and again we see this very clearly in the world of music that changing a few words can transform a lyric, just changing a few notes can transform melody even changing the way we look can transform somebody’s ability onstage to make an impact. When we deal with the arts ambiguity and abstractness can transform an idea into something very powerful.

Another observation that I would like to make is that often these non-scientific abstract forms of thinking coming into play far too late to have a real effect and then in turn seems to prove themselves inefficient because it is too late in the day, like learning to swim while you are drowning. Such as alternative treatments being used for cancer patients when it is the last resort. Even though there are instances of cures for supposedly incurable conditions, like somebody who has serious stress condition suddenly deciding that they needed to learn how to meditate. Yes meditation will work but it is better if you learn to meditate before you have the stress condition and then of course you would never know how effective meditation is because you might never get the condition.

So much better to learn to swim before you are drowning, much better to think about your health before your unhealthy.

Explore that way of thinking with regard to music, make sure that you are using concepts that develop your ability to be a musician beyond the technicalities before you need those skills; make those skills infuse your technical abilities.

Vic

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