We trade shelter for comfort. – Martin Shaw

Discomfort certainly makes you remember things; go back to some your earliest memories and they may be something like falling of your bike or having an accident which hurt. If you reflect upon those times you will remember in detail elements such as what somebody said to you, what the weather was like and what you were wearing. All this is pretty amazing because you may have only been five at the time and it doesn’t matter how old you become you still remember that event. I would say that music created with some sort of trade of discomfort has more impact the music that is not traded in that way.

The trouble with modernity and the problem with technology is they exacerbate the human trait for taking the easy and most comfortable way, it was never always like this, once being creative went with the need to suffer for your art. Now I do not say this lightly because it sounds a little tongue in cheek if not insensitive to the likes of the great artists who die young.

The above quote from Martin Shaw a great storyteller and myth rememberer is in the trading of shelter for comfort something dies in us because they lack meaning. The trading of something that causes a little pain really connects you with the work.

Maybe this is the problem we have in society that we all become a bit soft and we do not like to take a risk because it makes us feel uncomfortable. I am not suggesting we will go around whipping ourselves(or maybe we should have a whip- round) but I think that we need to be more aware in a tactile sense of the world around us without ‘skin in the game’ nothing has any real value.

Getting out of a financial fix involves pain, changes in society nearly always do, changing habits that lead to environmental damage involve us being uncomfortable with feelings like ‘why spend so much money on personal care products’when you are eating rubbish and you are overweight and no one really cares about you anyway, kind of uncomfortable.

Think of how much money you would save if you could embrace being uncomfortable about what you wear, and what someone else thinks of you. Think about how that would affect your work if you could embrace that maybe you may not need to work in order just to make money maybe just doing something you enjoy.

The problem is that we have been conditioned to look for comfort and not shelter when we get a car we are encouraged to get the one that shows status same with holidays how many of us have gone to Disney because the children have to go.

The best time for contempory music seems to be when things are difficult, the aftermath of the war which culminates in rock n roll and the blues boom and then the sixties, the rise of the heavy rock and metal in the depressed 70’s then punk, hip hop etc. Compare this to when things become more comfortable the real feeling is lost again, the music becomes complex but lifeless.

Remember a good song is a good song on just a guitar and vocal we don’t need the latest gizmo, or the London Philharmonic Orchestra .Whatever it is that you can envisage keep it simple, try to keep your life simple for instance when you teach you do not need to teach in a fully equipped recording studio. If you have one fine but it is not a prerequisite to becoming a good teacher.

So let’s get uncomfortable and go and create something amazing.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk Rock Summer school for all instruments ………

Magic has been drained out of history by the historians. Gordon White

There has been a fundamental omission in the telling of the past not just our past history but also in the way that we understand music and it is the role of magic within that story. It is difficult for us to reconnect with the fundamental belief in magic that our predecessors had and that it was infused in everything that they did and by extension music and art was used to connect with this otherworldliness. I would say that today music that is disconnected from this otherness has no inner energy this is why root styles of music frequently have to come back into the popular music arena in order to re-energise even if those musical styles are disguised as punk or grunge there is something innately visceral and otherworldly about those sorts of animal.

One thing that could be said about modern pop music is there is nothing really animal about it. It is so computerised and quantised that any essence of energy has been removed and replaced by something sterile, however if the computer becomes the servant and not the master the essence of the DJ producer can be bound into the songs, dance is a good example of this. I think the deciding point here is, were any risks taken? Producing a song by a Rihanna or a Katy Perry maybe more a case of not getting it wrong because of the big budgets involved.

We find it very difficult to be able to think in a mediaeval style because we have been told that the many of the things that they believed in are rubbish but obviously they did not think that, however if you ask yourself a question why something like ritualistic behaviour and magic systems seem to have been unchanged over a period of 2000 years then you have to ask why did they keep doing something that did not work? The logical answer to that is it did work but is only us that have rid ourselves of one of those tools from the toolbox.

I am suggesting that by looking back at styles that may influence us musically and getting to the root of what it is that drives it we can reconnect with what the music is all about and derive something from it for ourselves, if only to reanimate the music that we play. You do not have to believe only suspend your disbelief to lock into something. I would suggest Blues or Flamenco or the English folk music tradition and see what sort of weirdness you can find in there; Mojo’s, Dances of the spider, impossible tasks asked of ex-lovers etc. pull on that tread a little and see where it takes you.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk Summer school for budding rock stars.

Going for a mix and funny money

What is better 30 minute lesson for £20 or an hour lesson for £35?

Today we are entering the world of funny money where things are expressed in ways more attractive to the punter and better for you.

How many ads for insurance have you heard that state 'for only 50p a day you can have....'? If they asked for £180 for the same thing you might reject the idea straight off.

How have you positioned your teaching? If you are little Minnie's guitar teacher and it is a hobby that she does you are going to be cut out very quickly when the funds run low.

I see lots of people do this and you really need to position yourself as something special in her life that enriches it gives her skills that will be super valuable in the world that is coming. So things to look at,

Various payment levels that encourage people to pay for lessons in blocks and in advance.

Flexibility in the payments cash, bank transfer, cards etc.

Lesson flexibility; do they have to be every week? Could they be also be every two weeks or every month?

Encouragement for arrangements that you want; so make the time of lessons that you do not want more expensive.

Paying for a block of lessons being better financially for the pupil.

In all cases think yourself into the shoes of the person that you are dealing with and do things in such a way that helps them while helping you. So if they want lessons every two weeks well fine let them do that if that lesson would have been half an houra week then make it an hour a fortnight

The other angle/aspect that I like to do is trading skills, like lessons for computer maintenance and back up or help with book keeping. You can trade anything for lessons just think outside the box on this. Obviously not all lessons can be like this but several can be. I have currently have someone who teaches me yoga, someone who does computer work for me and someone who roadies and does other work around the house and garden when needed.

Let us be creative about what we do and how we trade that skill, there is more to business than money, originally there was no money and that means that people who have no money but have a skill or something that is an asset like a musical instrument that you can take in payment or any item for that matter then you are opening up the market to people that may not have the funds for lessons but have something else like a skill.

I find this a liberating way to think being far more democratising than just dealing with the currency that is imposed on us.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk music summer school in the amazing Tonbridge School in Kent UK

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