Rewards and punishments are the lowest form of education. Chuang Tzu

Our education system is based on testing and exams with various forms of rewards given through certification etc. The punishment aspect of it is deeply psychological with people feeling that if they do not achieve they have by extension failed.

I have always found that the most effective use of gradings in teaching the guitar is to create a goal and the journey towards that goal; that is the objective not the arrival, a bit like life. Do we need all the rewards and punishments for developing musical skills or just our motivation to play?

When I started playing there was a lot of social unrest and maybe we are entering that situation again as people begin to notice how much they have been misled by the media and politicians. The idea of getting out and venting your emotional energy was a great motivator and we certainly need motivation but examinations are not generally anything other than a measurement guide for someone else. They are better being a guide for you as a motivator because walking out on a stage waving your grade eight certificate will not prove anything but playing will.

If you look at musical education as being a tool which we can use to realise our artistic goals then we can use the cheapest form of education which is now mostly online or we could also use friends and other artistic colleagues to develop our skills cheaply by watching them play and asking questions. The role of the teacher is to give a good route on the map towards technical and artist realisation, in other words getting people to think for themselves and I do not see much scope for outside reward or punishment but more self-determination and discipline.

The truest measure of your ability is made by you. Most artists find it really difficult to look or listen to their own work after they have completed it and within that we can see that we are greatest critic.

Maybe the time is right for some other counterculture thing to develop where art is being used to critique the establishment and society as has happened numerous times before and potentially can happen again as we are sitting on so many ticking bombs.

So for you as an artist anything less than world domination is not be enough.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk three days of a music summer school to get you rocking

Cherish that which is within you, and shut off that which is without; for much knowledge is a curse. Chuang Tzu

Somebody came to see me during the week for an informal chat about starting guitar lessons. I tend to do this now instead of having conversations on the phone or emails going backwards and forwards about rates and times of lessons etc. I just find it easier for them to meet me and for me to meet them so that I can understand where they are coming from in their playing and if they have played before and what standard have they reached.

This particular person was interested in classical guitar and he had been playing for about four years, he spends some of his time out of the country and he has a guitar teacher while he is away so he was looking for one here. He seemed a very nice guy and he turned up with his guitar and his music; we sat down and had a cup of tea and chatted about what he had done before.

He started to tell me how wonderful the guitar teacher was in America and every lesson was like a masterclass. I found this interesting and when I looked at his music that he had every single note had a pencil mark next to it. The notation was so extensive to include both his right and left-hand fingering and also the dynamics of the piece. I then started to wonder what this guy had actually learnt and what had he discovered about himself musically or was he just following instructions.

He played a little bit to me and it could certainly get all the notes down but there was something lacking. As we discussed things further I gave him some ideas about developing the musicality of what he was playing but I could feel some sort of reticence. The thing really got me was when he produced the music for the Recuerdos de la Alhambra which he said he wanted to play as his autumn project.

I suggested that he should start looking at the piece before I see him next and mentioned some ways of approaching it, he gave me a slightly puzzled look. At that moment it was clear all the lessons had been a firm form of spoon feeding when in reality we need to find the musicality in ourselves and this can be done by teachers showing the way. However the pupil needs to learn self- sufficiency if a teacher goes into great detail on every piece when will the pupil learn that. There is only so many fish that you can give someone it is much easier for them to learn to fish and feed themselves.

We need to nurture what is inside of us and to some extent we do need to be initiated in this by someone else but the constant journey that you make as a musician is yours and not the teachers and although it does mean that you get return business if you teach like this because of the dependence of the pupil that is not the role of the teacher. The aim should be to make the pupil your master.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk three days of playing in a band and learning how to perform and to write songs like a rockstar.

Hammer to C8 Mate

For the open eyed, there is an opportunity here; when asked how he would prepare for a match against a computer, Dutch chess master Yann Hein Donner said; I would bring a hammer.

When faced with set patterns of behaviour in ourselves or in systems sometimes we have to do something radical to make a change. The way that things are now developing when there is less and less flexibility we need to do this.

There is a test which asks how many uses can you find for a paper clip? When children are asked this question they can come out with many more than an adult. I would postulate that education reduces the creative aspect of the mind because it becomes a paperclip and not just a piece of wire.

In music we can see this in the way that complexity will lessen possibility for example if I play one chord that chord can be in several keys but as soon as I play another the number of keys available will become fewer because we start to categorise the first chord.

Society has become the adult with reduced capacity to think and this in the words of my father talking about the highly educated, ‘needing a slide rule to cross the road’, today a satnav or an iPhone would be the instrument of choice. As a side effect of learning we discard the things that seem not to fit and therefore start to limit what is possible. What we discard may exist or be possible because we just have not seen it before like Taleb’s Black Swans.

Dealing with computers either overtly or not you can feel their presence in everything we do from the letter from the doctor, to the radio play list, to the way our lives are managed. So the limiting categorisation is happening to us by an algorithm.

For the musician we need to use computers but not be used by them, the world is full of lifeless stuff created by computers; we need to make sure that when we make a pact with the devil we have an exit strategy which keeps our soul intact. For that we need to rely on what is left of our humanness and I mean that in the very deepest and broadest of terms, that which engages us with our nature and by extension nature herself. So use ones passions from both ends of the spectrum to really charge up our creative juices because it is that that makes our creations interesting and compelling not some watered down sanitised version of what we have become.

Technology will destroy that which makes us what we are if we are not careful, we are already corralled by the technology and it is beginning to suck the creativity out of us. What we need is to be able to problem solve without the use of computers and then regain some form of control and then from that point we can engage with the technology on our terms. But faced with technology being used on us then I suggest we do what our ancestors would have done to the dominating force which was trying to take their souls beat the shit out of it with a hammer. All hail to Thor.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk three days of unlimited musically creativity and happiness …

Huge structural changes are looming for the education sector

 Huge structural changes are looming for the education sector. Think of how angry you would be if you were one of the last students to get so deeply into debt before everything changes. - Gordon White

The changes are a coming and the last people that will see it are the ones with the vested interest in the established ways of doing things, the very things that are going to be changed. What happened to the infrastructure of the horse drawn carriage and vehicle market as the internal combustion engine arrived; they saw it but did they respond to it?

Maybe having a vested interest makes change difficult or maybe they do not have a way of changing. One thing that appears clear to me as I get older is how difficult it would be for me to do something different than being musician. Fortunately being an music gives some flexibility but if I was somebody trained in a skill for which there is no more demand without an aspect of being able to step sideways and use my skills somewhere else then it would be so difficult for me to do something else. Of course for people who made wheels for carts or tack for horses the arrival of the motor car must have been a disaster, and in those days there was no such thing as retraining.

I see dangerous parallels with the past with the added necessity for retraining being part of the landscape of future employment on top of all debt that a young student will accumulate from university and of course retraining will not be free either. It looks like a good strategy to keep the wheels of academia oiled following the principle of medicine that it is more profitable to treat chronical sick than to cure as you have returning business.

Over the last few weeks I have been pondering the way that art and music can help people become more flexible in the way that they think and also looking at the possibility of what you do as an artist to make money. The principles that people want to be educated and be entertained still holds  Many people want to become rock stars in their dreams particularly when a young. Performance skills being used in the world of business for public speaking is a good example of how artistic skills can be turned to a profitable skill.

Extra to the opening quotation is the idea that much of today’s education can be established virtually for free online and this is an advantage that we should use to subvert the system but we should also see its failings that we will end up with many people doing the same thing because the reference points are the same so again the world of the arts and the ability to re-design and re-engineer yourself in a sort of Bowie-esque way is something that you need to work on.

But remember the Nobel laureate’s quote from the 1960s that ‘the times they are a changing’.

Vic

www.bluescampUK.co.uk three days of rocking out and learning the tricks of the trade from professional musicians and teachers with years of experience but hurry spaces are limited and next year’s allocation is already three-quarter sold-out.

There is an old saying that men plan and God laughs.

The plans of mice and men….. we obviously do need a plan just like making a plan for sailing a boat but as soon as you set sail the wind will change you then have to adapt your plan to fit the circumstances of the environment that you are in.

However when we make a plan with a business we often expect there to be no change of wind or adverse weather conditions et cetera et cetera, but of course as soon as you adopt a plan it needs to change. Maybe in this way any plan is a good plan however crazy, however optimistic, because it sets the ball rolling, the secret is to keep adapting the plan.

There is a saying in the British Army that as soon as the enemy moves you have to change your plans so therefore forget about what is taught in business studies at school or college or university and adopt a more artistic creative outlook and think that the plan is a dream, direction and objective and therefore will need to change as soon as is it is implemented.

So let’s look at this from the perspective of organising a concert, you may have the date in mind, support bands required the type merchandise required etc., as soon as you roll out these ideas there will be a problem maybe with the merchandise arriving on time or the support band that you had down not being able to make it. Now much of what you do by planning can be secured by some form of commitment normally financial from the participants for instance getting a support act to give you some money for the tickets which they then have to sell to recoup and make a profit. I’ve always found this a very successful way of developing a support act that can actually make money and bring in a crowd otherwise why would you have support act in the first place.

So in a nutshell make your plans exciting and creative but most of all flexible and with due diligence you should be able to adapt to circumstances as they arise being  prepared to trim your sales as long as you know what the basic requirements are stick to them.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk three days of playing in rock band learning the tricks of the trade from professional players.

The Grammar School Effect

Within the schools there is something that I call the ‘grammar school effect’ because it is more prevalent there, that children who are being educated seem to lose the ability to dream, having their heads crammed with facts and figures. The one thing that you need to do as an artist is to be able to dream and imagine the impossible. The grammar school system does not lend itself to that.
I was talking to a drummer friend of mine who teaches at a grammar school in Kent and he was saying that when you ask a pupil what their dream is they don’t seem to have one they just lost the capacity to have a fantasy or dream that drives them to doing something musical. He cited the pressure that they are under academically for the problem and I agree that the children in the grammar school education are so pressurised academically that learning a musical instrument is so far down the ladder of needs.
What is so incredible is that we know the value of music, singing and the arts and yet even with all the scientific psychological research it is being ignored in education and the arts are being pushed outside the curriculum.
It seems to be almost the kiss of death for children to pass the 11+ when it comes to something like music or art even politicians comment that people need to spend more time on their science and maths we will look back on this and realise that it is a disaster to think like that.
What needs to happen for us as teachers is to promote the beneficial effects of music to the well-being of people I would add to this that the ability of people to think is broadened with the aspect of music and art and this is something we need in the economy in the years to come.
It is not even that we do not have great success with arts in this country because we do. British artistic establishments and the music industry are a very bankable asset and they add to the country’s soft power however for music and arts to be undervalued in the society is a scandal but again it is another example of the pathetic nature of politics and its involvement in education.
As always the politicians will never be held responsible for this like many other things that they have done over the last few years. It is your job to do something about it in whatever way you can.
Vic
www.bluescampuk.co.uk  join the fun, music, song writing and meeting other musicians

Getting involved

Probably the best way of getting involved in music is by jamming with other people and although practice at home is good being a bedroom guitar player is not the best way to learn.

The old jazz musicians learnt their trade by hanging out with other players learning the standards and learning the types of phrases that their idols would play. Some great stories of people hanging out with musicians like Art Tatum and just watching close at hand what the maestro do and then going away and emulating it somewhere else.

Certainly the old blues and rock players did the same thing as well as working things out from recordings, and virtually all of the rock and roll guitarists got involved playing standards of the day at dances or at the numerous hops around America.

However what happens today is not so much of this thing going out and gigging but sitting in front of a computer screen watching people on YouTube. This does not teach you the inner language and dialogue that happens between musicians in the band. The only way to learn this is to go out and play and you should do this anywhere you can.

I started playing just before the advent of punk, there were plenty of places to play, village halls pubs etc. and we put on our own gigs they were not particularly good but they were great fun because we were young we had an audience of our peers.

What has taken over from this grassroots practical way of becoming a jobbing musician is this idea of going to college to learn the trade. Do not go to college and get yourself into debt to become a rock musician! That is quite frankly now ridiculous because of the cost. For the sort of money you are putting out you could launch a tour with the rock band and although I am not suggesting you do this you can see how far a debt of £30,000 could go.

If your university or college training is being paid by somebody else then all well and good but if it is actually going to be your debt learn what you can as cheaply as you can and build your contacts from the grassroots up.

So if you are starting out make sure you got time to practice at home but most of all play and have fun with others and be encouraged by the fact that the greatest bands of all time from the Beatles to the stones to Led Zeppelin to the Foo Fighters and Nirvana all did what you are about to do jam with their mates and got out playing.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk three days of music which is nearly sold out for next year