Creative podcast - Asking better questions

NLP communication skills and creative tactics.

NLP communication skills and creative tactics.

As a teacher and communicator we need to maximise the efficiency of our communication. In today’s society with the challenges that this presents it is even more important to hone your skills.

For anybody who works where communication is at the very heart of what they do, whether you are a teacher, health professional, salesperson; the tactics of NLP will be of use to you.

As you know many of these courses that you can find online would involve groups of people, however that is not practical at this present moment, therefore I am offering one-to-one training either face-to-face or online through Zoom or Skype.

I have used these techniques for over 25 years of music and teaching and I have found them to be valuable and beneficial whether you are in creative mode or communication mode.

Contact me on (07976) 405561 for further details.

 

 

Guitars are almost indestructible, and there is a little goldmine out there

 Guitars are almost indestructible, and there is a little goldmine out there 

Have you got an old electric guitar that has been hanging around, or maybe an old acoustic with a couple of strings missing? They may be repairable, in fact electric guitars and pretty much indestructible, so why not get it fixed?

One of the problem areas on the guitar is the fretboard or the neck. Sometimes the neck can warp, but on a well-made guitar you can adjust this by tensioning or relaxing the truss rod that runs through the middle of the neck. Now this is a job for somebody who knows what they are doing, so I would suggest that you find a guitar repairer who could do this for you, they will also be able to restring the guitar and maybe change the tuning pegs if required.

I was always amazed as a teenager that when you spoke to people about playing the guitar they always had one knocking around the house somewhere. It always surprised me how many people didn’t play but they seemed to have a guitar and as I was getting into teaching at the time I would often get them to pass my name around.

A good friend of mine who is an architect keeps a guitar and amp in his office. He says it is a good talking point when people come in to discuss a new project, getting the conversation off to a relaxed start.

In the years that I’ve been teaching I’ve known a number of occasions where old guitar has been found in the loft and it’s turned out to be quite a  find. The most extreme and for example of this was somebody found an original Gretsch White Falcon that came in the original Gretsch case and this was worth a few thousand pounds 20+ years ago. Although this is unusual there often finds of classic less well-known guitars such as Hofner, and EKO and even the odd Fender Stratocaster.

A few years ago I put the word out for some old guitars to be donated for charity, I had given to me around about 20 guitars that I was able to repair and get into a number of schools that were short on musical instruments. Even in that number there are a couple of Fender Squire’s that were literally given to me for nothing. So this might be a little bit of a goldmine if you are willing and able to do a little bit of repair work and TLC on the instrument.

I am personally keen on the whole idea of recycling and therefore the idea of an old guitar just being thrown away to me is quite abhorrent. Guitars have their own character, even the cheap ones, and with some attention can be made into something quite special. I have an old Ibanez Road Star that I had rebuilt. The guitar actually cost me nothing because it had been left in a school by an ex pupil for a few years and as he had gone back to some exotic country he was very unlikely to come back to retrieve the instrument. The basic build quality of the guitar was very good so I just stripped down and repainted it but then spent some money on pickups and a nice scratch plate. This is one of the guitars that I used to gig, playing in a different tuning and using it for bottleneck blues playing.

I mentioned earlier that electric guitars are pretty much indestructible, so what about the acoustic guitars. The obvious weakness on the acoustic guitar is the acoustic body which is basically a hollow box, and if this gets damaged it might be difficult to repair. It’s not impossible but it is something that you would have to do because the cost of taking it to a professional unless the instrument is a high quality would really not be worth it. However that does not stop the instrument being useful for parts and the same goes for the electric guitar of course. You might fancy building something yourself but using the hardware from an old instrument.

Now if you have an artistic bent then and unplayable instrument might be made into a work of art or even dare I say this into some sort of container; which takes me to a story of an old classical guitar teacher of mine who was horrified that one of his pupils had old guitars with plants growing out of them hanging on their wall.

So with all these guitars knocking around, by the law of averages some of them could be valuable and a good guitar keeps its value not necessarily from the point of view of sale as that is market dependant, but certainly from the point of view of its usefulness.

So if you are keen on salvaging and repairing a guitar but do not know how to play I have a free course that can help

So until next time

Vic

Visit www.bluescampuk.co.uk for links to the free course

for news on the Creative podcast if you want to learn to create and be successful visit my Patreon https://www.patreon.com/vichyland 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How music can change your world

I think it’s fair to say that most people would be able to tell you anecdotal evidence to point to the fact that music is of great benefit to her health and her state of well-being but how about it being true the transformation where it can rebuild your life, prolong your life and change the world that you inhabit?

For me I’ve been teaching and playing music now for over 45 years and I am very interested in music from an artistic and psychological point of view and have used NLP alongside music to transform my life and other people’s lives as a teacher.

 

My search into a deeper aspect of music started many years ago and being intrigued and just basically nosy about what made successful musicians achieve and create and wanting to know how they did it, I started the ‘Creative’ podcast, interviewing musicians and artists and getting them to tell their stories to see if I could find any clues.  One of the lines of thought that I picked up on is where idea that there were no limits to possibilities and this is evident in people who are highly successful.

I was a conversation with Ben Thomas who plays guitar for Adele. Ben has been her guitarist right from the beginning, meeting her at Brit School. He was telling me about being invited over to her birthday party in America and he describes all the crazy things that are going on within this mansion. people doing magic tricks and stuff like that and he was saying that when you meet these high performing and high achieving people they don’t have any limits to what they believe, they can do anything, anything is possible, like there are no rules.

For us hearing this initially might make us slightly concerned and conflicted but in actual fact that tells us something about why we are stuck, because there are limits to what we think is possible.

 

Prince obviously later on his life had some dealings with Mormonism but Princes artwork and the way that he presented himself had blatant magical overtones such as the use of sigils (remember the logo and the odd shaped guitar that he played)

On the surface that all seemed ridiculous however these people are achieving unbelievable things with this mind-set so if we come from a scientific process to test things out you can’t test something out with the belief that it’s not going to work you have to be open-minded and then if something works then that is all that you are really concerned with.

A number of years ago I became involved in NLP and I was fortunate enough to do the training with Richard Bandler, Paul McKenna and Michael Breen, but it was Richard Bandler’s story about how he arrived with the idea of NLP was fascinating.

He tells the story about as a young man being enthusiastic about martial arts trained for many hours a day, however he is diagnosed with cancer and he is so angry and distraught about this he says that he went AWOL and then in his words ‘I woke up in Mexico’ he said that he discovered later that tequila was a great way of destroying cancer cells as it obviously destroyed his tumour, but reading deeper into this story I think he was talking about his pilgrimage to Mexico to meet a shaman following in the footsteps of Carlos Castaneda and book The Teachings of Don Juan.

I am guessing here but I am assuming that Bandler took copious amounts of peyote in the Mexican desert and ‘woke up’, much of NLP is based on shamanic practice just like the work of Carl Jung being deeply indebted to the mystical Christianity and Gnostic traditions which was only evident after the red book was published only recently.

For both of these people they needed to ‘science up’ the work, which speaks a lot about the situation that we find ourselves in with the current thought paradigm which is, if something that doesn’t fit it cannot be spoken, to do so is a form of heresy; science has become a religion. We have situations where people will not dispute ideas from their teachers until those teachers have died and then somebody else can put forward a new hypothesis. This happens in all sorts of areas from science to archaeology, medicine, to psychology and even research into the areas of ESP.

 

So let’s look at what music can do let’s start with what we think it can do. I believe the power of the arts can literally change the world,

Change the context and that will change the detail, at the moment music and the arts are very much of a commodity but it never used to be it was powerful and change the conscious of people (trance dance in shamanic traditions but also raves, discos rock concerts etc) the details can also change the context one can influence the other if we start approaching music, dance, drama, poetry etc in a way that it has real power it can start to really change your life.

How?

Come to Bluescamp and we will show you ……..

www.bluescampuk.co.uk

 

 

 

Ways to make music in these hard times

 

Ways to make music in these hard times

 

The experience of lockdown and its effect on live music has been significant and it doesn’t look as if there is any change on the horizon, it is therefore up to us to look for opportunities in these rather chaotic times. It is safe to say that there are always opportunities in a crisis but they may not be obvious, and they certainly will require us to think very differently about what we have to offer.

Often in these situations the answer is found elsewhere, so for instance if you are looking for an answer to your gigging the answer might be found in something other than concerts, it might be found in sports coaching for instance.

 

If we are waiting for a return to what we did before, we going to have a long wait, we’ll have to think about how we can perform to maybe a few people and go and stream the performance as well, or maybe a ‘drive in’ concert like drive-in cinema might be an idea.

 

They are relevant answers out there, but we’ve got to use our creativity to work out how we can transfer techniques from other areas if life and business. In song writing when somebody is stuck I often ask them what’s the song about? Maybe the song is just a bunch of chords at that point in time and the lyrics have not been written, when they reply that they don’t know, my standard response is ‘what is it not about’ and interestingly people know; if you know what it is not, you must know what it is; it is probably its opposite.

 

This happens a lot when we think because our language frames things, so when we are stuck and we can’t think of an idea it’s because we’ve got into a cul-de-sac in that way of thinking. Language creates the context and landscape that the ideas live, and the way we talk and think about music creates a framework which often becomes a cage.

 

We need to step back and take another turning further up the road, there is always an answer because there are many possibilities in any situation, if you think that it’s more about the question and not about a conclusive answer then you get a flow of ideas.

 

Questions that give forward momentum are good, remember just like meeting people, the person that you want often need to meet isn’t the person that you first meet, it is the friend that they know that can really change your life; a bit like questions and answers, the first question isn’t the one that’s going to lead you in the direction that you need, but it’s what it stimulates. So going back to our problem, what are you going to do about music in this brave new world, what ideas are thrown up by looking at other businesses and how do they do things?

 

Viewing things through a different perspective can give you great ideas, look at things outside of your work in this particular period of time, online sales for instance, clothing, things that have to be delivered. Is there anything we can do from that perspective? Can you deliver your music? Serenading for instance?

 

What is it that you can do for people that’s original and interesting?

I’ve always been successful in getting people turning up to gigs because I involve people in the concerts. Is there any way that you can do something to involve people in your creative processes? Write songs in collaboration with clients for example.

What little niche markets do you know?

 

It’s all about friendship groups;

Engage with information to broaden what we are doing. It is important and many musicians are already doing this, take for instance the singer songwriter and guitar player who has been doing gigs from his kitchen and his back garden during the worst times of lockdown, being funded online by donations. He was on this from day one; we need that proactive ability now more than ever to deal with what is coming, not just what we are experiencing at the moment.

 

So here are some ideas

 

1.       Gigs streamed (RSC productions streamed into cinemas)

2.       Gigs in a drive in situation like the old American drive in movies

3.       Personal gigs in someone’s garden ( got this idea from Chris Difford of Squeeze)

4.       Collaborations with businesses for musicians in residence (like artist in residence) this could also be like the Beatles playing on a rooftop in London.

5.       Find places that have social distancing ideas already in operation such as churches that you can play.

6.       The silent disco but for live bands where the audience have headphones and can dance in a large area such as a field or large marquee.

7.        Go back to the rave culture with a secret gig somewhere that nobody knows about till the last moment

8.       Read up on the East German Punk movement and see how they managed to get gigs happening in a communist regime (that was really tough and illegal)

 

So to add a little bit of focus, develop areas in your art that may be week like song writing and arranging or recording.

We are running a completion for next year’s Bluescampuk in Tonbridge all you need to do is record your song on your phone and send it to us at www.bluescampuk.co.uk the winner gets a free place at next year’s camp.

Get writing ..

 

Vic and the team  

 

 

 

 

Ways to make money from music in these hard times

 

Ways to make money from music in these hard times

 The experience of lockdown and the effect on live music and music education has been significant, and it does not look as if there are any significant changes on the horizon.  It is therefore up to us to look for opportunities in these rather chaotic times. It is safe to say that there are always opportunities but they may not be obvious, they certainly will require us to look very differently at what we have to offer.

Often in these situations the answer is found somewhere else, for instance if you are looking for an answer to your problems look elsewhere in another industry or discipline.

Where are the problems that music teachers are having at the moment?

You cannot assume that things will go back to normal; this event has caused a seismic change in the way that you are going to do things in the future. If you been able to teach online, that is going to be an important component to the work that you do in the future, even if you are able to resume face to face work. It can increase your catchment area to the rest of the world; the only problem is people finding you.

 Online recording work,

There is literally no barrier to where you could work in the world if you are set up to record at home. I have a number of friends who have over the years supply music for films and artists around the world from the comfort of their own home studio. LinkedIn is probably the best place to forge those contacts because it is the platform for professional people of numerous areas of business.

 Don’t just limit yourself to the world of music

Other businesses require music for their presentations and maybe some sort of in-house training this is a brilliant time to be able to offer that, particularly if you can do it online because businesses who are strapped for cash may be able to afford you doing the training as a sort of experience day.

It is also a good idea to create a check list of other skills that you have and see if they can be useful at this point. I know musicians who are skilled in computer programming and others who are keen gardeners, instrument makers, meditators etc. If you have a van and happy to carry things about there is always the (Wo)Man with a van.

 Support for others as a Mentor

 If you have expertise in a particular area, whether it’s in teaching or performance, how about mentoring those who are starting out? You could mentor someone who is a teacher who looks up to you as being an expert in their discipline or you can mentor somebody fresh out of college looking to develop their skills as a musician in the real world.

Remember that people will buy from other people that they trust.

Make the most of the goodwill that you have developed over time with your customer base, whether that is in the form of teaching or concerts. A good customer knows that times are difficult and therefore when you advertise you can ask for their support. Now is the time to record lessons to sell, remember to focus into a niche in the market. You may think that everything is already free on the internet but there are still people making money from Diets and Yoga all of which are abundant on YouTube

Experience days

Companies such as Airbnb, buyagift and experiencedays may be a good port of call getting on a platform that could show your work. Not only does it give you some sort you kudos within the industry but is a very good way of being able to spread your name.

Think of how you could package your things is an experience day maybe ‘beginners guitar in a morning’

And it’s always about innovation and technology 

Whether we like technology or not (and I’m not particularly keen) unfortunately we are where we are. Technology has always been an essential aspect of a human’s interaction with the world. Fire is a technology which meant we could travel very far into temperate zones and apart from offering us warmth it also offered us protection and the ability to create things.

We used it to create implements, it stimulated culture, stories were told around campfires and were the great spiritual force in humanity. But it is also an amazing destructive force when out of control, so think about it,  you know we could use modern technology for good and not so good, but we can’t step back from it, however much we would like to. I can assure you I am a bit of a Luddite at heart. I prefer to do things manually however I do play the electric guitar and not acoustic so in that regard I am hypocrite.

So let’s embrace new tech as we’ve got and use it anyway.

 Think of creative places to play

 Look around you and see what great ideas other people are having, from gigs in your front garden being streamed online, to the possibility of gigs in big open spaces. From the aircraft hangar to the open field, the possibility of a silent disco, which we can turn into a silent concert where all the audience wear headphones, to the drive in movie becoming the drive in concert.

 So it’s time to open your mind up and come up with his many interesting and novel ideas. These are often not the solutions on their own but the idea is that they stimulate other ideas. It’s a little bit like meeting somebody at a party; they know somebody who would be the perfect contact for you. Like Stanley Milgram’s 6 degrees of separation, where you are only six people away from anyone else in the world. I think it’s the same with ideas; one idea will introduce you to another idea. So with that in mind get out there, start talking to people in other businesses and industries and see what ideas they have and see what it stimulates in you.

 So for those of you who are in need of personal help and some form of mentoring I currently have on my Patreon site a Guitar Mentoring program to help you through your problems and find answers. This is explained on the intro video visit https://www.patreon.com/vichyland

 Yours Vic

What makes a good guitar teacher?

What makes a good guitar teacher?

It’s not so obvious what makes a good teacher, having knowledge of the subject is important obviously, but if you’re the sort of person who cannot transmit that information to somebody else, you are not a good teacher.

I have come across many people who are experts in their subject, but are unable to appreciate where the pupil is at that point in time in order to instruct them.

I have also come across people, who are only slightly ahead of the pupil in what they really know, but they are excellent at transmitting that information; they in my opinion are good teachers!

If you go back to when I started there was no formal training in contemporary guitar styles, and there were no exam qualifications at the time. If you wanted to do gradings you had to study a classical instrument. If you were a young whippersnapper like me and you just wanted to just go out and change the world by playing rock guitar,  you were unlikely to go and study an instrument like the piano in order to get a piece of paper to get a job.  I would still rather work at getting in through the back door by gigging and making connections. This was the way that things used to be done in the past, and I suggest actually that this should be more of the way of doing things now.

A good teacher is a mind reader

If someone is able to look inside the mind of a pupil knowing exactly where they are, and is able to read the rules that are laid out in front of them to see the problems and how they can be best corrected they possess a skill of teaching.

This skill requires someone to be focused on the subject, in other words the pupil.

A good teacher is an iconoclast

Break the rules in order that people can be free, so they can get out of the cage they have created by the way they think and by the way they play. This requires the teacher to think outside the box, for instance what do you do when somebody comes along who has a deformity in their hands or their fingers? If you are playing classical guitar how do you get on with the fact that they’re not going to be using the ‘correct fingers’?

What happens if they have some problem in the way that they see the world?  You have to inhabit their world in order for them to express themselves through music, there is no school curriculum or syllabus that will help you, it’s completely down to your own genius. Take the labels like ADHD and throw them away.

A good teacher knows that they are rubbish.

All of the things that one holds dear are only ideas. For everything a teacher tells a pupil about technique there is a great player who is doing the exact opposite. You can never know it all and you are never truly correct.

A good teacher is also a good business person

 Charging a high rate for what they do, but giving incredible value in the way they do is important. A teacher should not be held to account by other teachers who are undervaluing themselves. A teacher should make sure that they earn a good living from what they do, because it will add life force to the work.

If you don’t charge enough you will resent working!

A good teacher is organised, punctual and reliable.

Many things that are taught and not direct, are implicit in what they do. Being an organised and reliable one inadvertently teaches a pupil to be the same. To succeed as a musician, if that’s what they choose, one of the most important skills that you need is reliability. This is because no one wants to work with an idiot who forgets what he or she is booked to do, who is late and unreliable. They will make one or two gigs by being like that, but after they will not be hired again, ever. And the same goes for a teacher.

Remember that Bluescampuk are running free Q&A sessions the next one is one July 21^st at 7.30pm contact us for details

Vic and the team