Maybe we are all Jacob Marley’s ghost deep down.

Over the Christmas period I watched several versions of A Christmas Carol. My mother used to read this to me most Christmases when I was a child and therefore have a connection to it, but this year I noticed something else about the story.

Marley’s ghost carries chains forged by his greed and he warned Scrooge that his chains were longer and heavier because of Scrooges behaviour however on reflection it isn’t just about his miserliness.  I started to read into this something about the nature of the materialism, because in a strange sort of way the ghost of Christmas present and the subsequent redemption of Scrooge which leads to him becoming another person is in essence about how he deals with the money.

The ghost of Christmas present is almost some godlike figure like a Jupiter as expressed by the Romans, that of bountifulness if not over indulgence, not about having nothing, but having plenty. What Scrooge does with his money is part of his redemption.

So it is more about the material being a tool not possessing us but us possessing it. Now I realised that this is the same situation with technology in that at first we use it then it uses us and that is the dilemma and the risk for everything including A.I.

Let me explain, Hendrix could make the effects pedals do what he had in his head, after that people bought the pedals to sound like Hendrix so they were being controlled if you like by the technology instead of making it do something else, something different.

This is what happens with systems, money and ideas; they end up controlling us and in that way Scrooge was being controlled by money like it had an intelligence of its own possessing him and that is exactly what happens with ideas and technologies, they act like they have a will of their own. Very strange, but phrasing things in that way might help us deal with problems, creating something outside ourselves having agency over us but separate from us. Consciousness and reality are slippery things and sometimes we need to be more slippery than them to regain control. 

Maybe it is just a series of ideas that are running us but ideas with their own agency and consciousness. This is something that seems plausible in certain lines of scientific enquiry at the moment.

So the question is what do you need to redeem yourself from? Do you sabotage your own success for instance and what ideas do you want to take root to make you change and become successful?

I will be organising some podcasts to look at how people make a success of what they do, I have a number of musicians that are recorded already and  I will be expanding that to artists and entrepreneurs. The aim is for you to achieve something either by using the podcasts or being more involved with a premium membership which I am currently working on so I can teach you material like NLP that I have found very useful to the creative process.

So here is to the Unchained Melody ……….

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk  Rock school with a difference  

Is there a change a coming?

Teaching a musical instrument goes through many twists and turns over the years, instruments can go in and out of fashion and the numbers of pupils can go up and down.

The competition has always been there and that also changes form as well. At the moment the iPhone, various gaming and the general influence of online sharing are the main areas of completion.

Sometimes these become an ally as in the case of something like Guitar Hero or film music that is retro or instrument based such as School of Rock or The Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack that helps to give a boost to the number of pupils that want to have lessons. I sense a change however with the ability of many to concentrate for long enough to learn an instrument. Maybe it has always been like this and only now I am seeing it but this has been noticed by others as well.

Every problem in business is an opportunity so focusing on the possibility of children developing their ability to concentrate could be a good business angle. I have a friend who uses djembe drumming at big corporate events to get people off their mobile phones. When they turn up there is a big drum sitting in their chair and the first hour they are involved in teambuilding workshop and by the time it is completed the phones stay in their pockets for the rest of the day.

I am not entirely convinced about the future of teaching within certain schools especially in the grammar school system in Kent where the pressure is on for them to achieve high marks in their academic exams. The pupils and parents are fearful of not doing enough revision and therefore the instrumental lessons often take a back seat when really they could be helping them to relax in-between periods of exam revision.

There was an article recently in the Washington post talking about the slow death of the electric guitar saying that sales have plummeted over the last few years. Now there may be an element of ‘The reports of my death have been grossly exaggerated ‘ to this and we do not really know whether people are just playing more acoustic guitars or whether they are becoming more savvy about buying second-hand guitars  for instance. What I will say is that the general flow of new pupils seems to be changing although the guitar still outperforms most other instruments, certainly within independent schools, and its main rival now seems to be the drums and not the piano.

The form of teenage rebellion which was always included the guitar maybe just now is taking a back seat to video blogging or even podcasting; could this be the natural development in the cult of the individual?

But how does that influence us as musicians either as performers or teachers? Could playing a musical instrument for many people be just too much like bloody hard work and because we are in a culture of nihilism with a materialist aspect of thought now means there is just nothing worth thinking about as nothing is of any relevance? People do not need to find themselves because there isn’t anything there from that viewpoint and that was certainly something that music offered me was to discover something about myself through playing.

I do not think this has completely disappeared but the tide of opinion and the way that the media works seems to point in that direction and maybe instead of running a rear-guard action on this we should be fighting a guerrilla war, a bit like the women who go out doing guerrilla knitting. Instead of surrounding street furniture with crocheted colourful fluffy bits of artwork, we should write a song certainly this happened in the 60s with the protest movement and we certainly have things to protest about at the moment if we just look up from the iPhone.

Vic

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

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