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