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