The Master of Demon Valley

The mouth is the door of the mind; the mind is the host of the spirit. Will, intention, joy, desire, thought, worry, knowledge and planning all go in and out through the door. - The Master of Demon Valley.

This is an ancient Taoist text which was translated by Thomas Cleary some twenty years ago and it tells of how Taoist thought and philosophy of ‘the way’ could be used to influence and control the population.
The premise is that all things move from masculine active to feminine receptive or as they express it as Yin and Yang the Yang being the masculine. Language is used to develop that depending on where you are in that arc and not so much about the reality of language expressing truth as we think of it; more in a way of language as a form of magic and spell casting.
The similarities with NLP are interesting with the language being seen as fluid and influential to the mind of the listener.
So if you want to write a rousing song use rousing words, something about love keep saying love, a song about anger, use words that express anger even if they do not make sense in a literal way use language’s power of poetry.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk

Is in the way you tell ‘em

 A pupil of mine is working on the blues phrasing of Albert King and Stevie Ray Vaughan and the way that the lines from the former are found in the playing of SRV. However there are differences and he also mentioned to me that he was finding it confusing listening to various versions on the internet of transcriptions of Stevie’s Crossfire.

He asked ‘How is it that different versions of the same solo exist from different transcribers?’ The only way I could answer him was to say ‘please pass the salt’ and then ‘please, pass the salt’ they mean subtly different things. It is all in the dynamics and delivery and that maybe the listener will interpret different meanings in what they hear, a little like saying does your seeing of the colour blue match someone else’s seeing of that colour.

Guitar playing is very much like speaking a language and therefore you need to listen and then play what you hear NOT what someone else tells you they hear. When you have a number of phrases speak them in your tongue make the phrases communicate and remember that what you hear may not be what others hear. Hear with your feelings and not with your intellect, this will be more truthful; then hone it down like a child would do with language.

Vic



www.bluescampuk.co.uk

Three days of playing in a rock band – learn the tricks of the trade.

 

Giving up ownership of your inspiration

The idea that we are not the source of the songs and that we only act as a conduit for the music is an appealing thought for me.
Leonard Cohen expressed this beautifully in his acceptance speech to the Prince of Asturias Foundation were he said the skills of playing guitar were handed to him by a young Spanish guitarist whom he met in Montreal and his lyrics were inspired by the great Spanish poet Lorca. Here is the link to that speech on YouTube https://youtu.be/VIR5ps8usuo
He said of Lorca that he taught him to find his voice even though he understood well the rules of poetry he did not have a voice until he read Lorca. The young Spaniard who taught him the fundamental chords of the guitar gave him the ingredients for all of his songs in six chords, in essence Cohen passed the ownership of his songs back to the land of Spain because the inspiration was rooted in its soil although he personally has no hereditary link.
There seems something fundamentally magical about giving up ownership of your inspiration; it seems to open the flood gates to ideas, pictures, words and feelings as if brought by the muse’s from somewhere else.
So much of education is about being ‘in your head’ whereas the area of creativity is linked to something less formed and something more abstract.

Vic

www.bluescamp.co.uk

Break the Rules

The successful artist that break the rules of the expected way to do things interests me. They are the ones that point to the answer to what makes a great musician.
These anomalies, the Muddy Waters, the Captain Beefheart’s  the John Lee Hooker’s, the Django Reinhardt’s and the Bob Dylan’s of this world are the ones who do not know scales, cannot read music, they are often the illiterate, the ones who play from the heart, the drug takers, the heavy drinkers, the iconoclasts, the womanisers, the radicles and the ones who think outside the box.
The list of these characters includes the deformed, the mentally ill, the revolutionaries, the anarchists and traditionally the ones who get arrested, thrown into jail, and die young.   The fact that rule breaking and the bending of normality seems to be inherent for these people.
Look at those you teach or work with who are different and you will see something powerfully creative in them and that is something which can be tapped into to.
Jimi Hendrix wasn’t necessary the best guitarist for his time actually that fell to the likes of Wes Montgomery and Tal Farlow but Jimi took what he heard and coloured it through the prism of his experiences and personality.
So let us embrace the different and the awkward and counter intuitive (or counter intellectual) and make something expressive and beautiful and challenging.

Vic
www.bluescampuk.co.uk check it out

Language tells the mind what to see and what remains hidden and it is language that makes the world exist in our mind. Without the words we have no way to frame it.

An interesting concept, that words not only reflect but also frame how we think.
We can  see evidence of  this in national consciousness, for instance the poetic language of Iran leads to the rather unusual (to the West) allegorical political statements that we are unfamiliar with, which sound as if the speakers  are trying to hide something. Whereas the rather simplistic English used by the Americans lead to the rather blunt and politically aggressive statements which are more familiar. 
There is a theory that the very essence of language; the words, not only are the tools for expressing our thoughts but may also be the things that create our ability to think in a certain way. So if you have a word for something you can experience it, if you do not then you cannot experience it.
Subjugated people have throughout history had their language and their beliefs taken away or debased in order for ethnic cleansing to happen. We as a nation had this happen to us where the native tongue of the British was taken away by the Romans and then that was taken away by the Saxons to be then taken away and debased by the Normans.
Adding music to words can make the effect of language more potent, think of the religious use of music and language with chanting and song. Lyrics are hypnotically powerful because of the rhythms and it is easily possible for music to induce a religious trance. I am not sure why this is but I would guess that the rhythms impact the unconscious aspect of the memory stopping the intellectual analysis of the words and allowing the unconscious effect to take place.
Words carry an emotional resonance, also the way words are spoken changes that level of resonance. Words such as ‘Love’ and ‘Trust’ carry an emotional resonance which will be different to different listeners depending on their experience. Words such as Hate and Greed are so loaded with emotional meaning and are often used by governments and society to create the organising effect of the ‘Leopard outside’ making a community bond through fear. This technique is being used for everything from Fracking (lack of energy), to Terrorism (fear of the apocalypse from the men with beards) to GM (the lack of food security). The truth as always is more complex and nuanced than that and often the deciding point left out is someone is going to make a lot of money out of the desired result of fear but we are being corralled by the smell of fear or moral panic.
The language that we use frames our personal world and language is the way your world functions. Now it is our turn to use language in a way that is truly powerful, with music.
Vic
 www.Bluescampuk.co.uk

Pre sort clients.

A few years ago I came across a company that used some unusual techniques for marketing.

They started as a carpet cleaning company in America or Canada but their techniques were so effective they took the ideas and franchised them out to other carpet cleaners and then started to teach the marketing ideas to other industries.

The company called itself Piranha Marketing because the idea was to 'eat the competition alive'. Some of their ideas had been taken from other business sectors but they had managed to take them up a gear or two.

One of these ideas was how to pre sort the enquiries so that only the ones of use to you contact you for a booking, thus saving you time and money on unnecessary enquiries.

The idea behind this was novel it was by using a long pre recorded phone message giving all the details of your business. I believe that this was a good idea and by giving a prepaid number no one was too bothered about how long the message was.

The idea was to inform the customer about the business and why they should choose you and not someone else. By the end of the call the 'hot' prospects were leaving their details but the time wasters had already hung up.

We often spend money in the wrong place when we advertise; aiming at the wrong people so even when you get people interested they are often the people who you don't want anyway.

These ideas were pre internet so another way of doing this would be to put something on YouTube that clearly marks out why you are the best and why someone should choose you so by the end of the film they can phone you so leave the details then.

Remember that you will need to leave the details on your site about the YouTube film and make sure that people visit there before they contact you by offering a special deal.

Vic

 

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

 

 

 

Laziness on the curriculum

I am currently preparing for some corporate training and NLP programmes, digging through books and just sitting thinking about the things to be covered, I have been reflecting on music, society, education and us.
Most of the time I go around in some form of robotic state and this trance state does my driving, teaching, eating and many other functions but what I have noticed is that state does not do song writing and guitar practice, if anything it stops me and that is something I need to change in my life.
The only reason I find for this is creativity is something that happens when I am totally relaxed and have nothing to do, in other words in my idleness zone.  So idleness is one of the things that I need to embrace and find for myself otherwise nothing will change for me.
The other state that I find useful and again one much maligned is the state of naivety, without it one would never do anything because the odds are so stacked against you why bother.
In the past naivety has helped me become a guitarist, helped me play gigs that I will think about as real achievements in my life and taken me to life experiences that shaped me; if I thought about those things first they would never have happened.
So let us include laziness into the school curriculum so that daydreaming will develop the creative trance and let us do it in a state of total naivety so that children and adults can believe anything and in that blissful state open the mind to the possibilities of new ideas set apart from the ideas of society that restrict.

Vic


www.bluescampuk.co.uk