Category Archives: Motivational

The 4 Steps To Getting A Gig

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Recently I had an experience that may be of interest to beginning players out there.  Conversely, I think that these are the same steps that are taken in taking on any new project or endeavor so this can be adapted to getting a job, or any other collaborative process.

The Gig

I was asked if I’d participate in a local production of a new play.  I knew the director and knew that he did really great work and said I’d be happy to help out.

Step 1.  Have a skill set and Be seen.

People need to know who you are and know what you do in order to know to contact you.  This also means that you need to know people in your area.

The director asked me to show up and meet with himself and the playwright.  I did so.  He informed me that another musician was coming who would also be working on the production.

While we sat there drinking tea.  We talked about the project. I talked about how we could use sound and the roles of everyone there.  The other musician never showed.

Step 2.  Show Up / Follow Through / Don’t Flake

This is the biggest step.   I can’t tell you the number of people who loose gigs because they just don’t show up.

A lot of it is people psyching themselves out and thinking they don’t have the skills, so they won’t get the gig so why bother?

Here’s a tip – no one ever feels 100% ready.  Show up anyways as prepared as you can be and do what you do at the highest level you can.  Then at least you won’t spend years later living in regret wondering what could have happened.

This advise is closely followed by – show up on time.  Consider this quote from Anthony Bourdain:

Show up on time. I learned this from the mentor who I call Bigfoot in Kitchen Confidential. If you didn’t show up 15 minutes exactly before your shift, if you were 13 minutes early, you lost the shift, you were sent home. The second time you were fired. It is the basis of everything. I make all my major decisions on other people based on that. Give the people that you work with or deal with or have relationships with the respect to show up at the time you said you were going to. And by that I mean, every day, always and forever. Always be on time. It is a simple demonstration of discipline, good work habits and most importantly respect for other people.

(You can read the entire interview here and this is perhaps the only time in my life I will link to Men’s Journal magazine).

So while we were waiting and discussing the overview, the director suddenly said, “Ok it’s almost 6 o’clock – Did you bring a guitar?  Are you ready?”

“No I didn’t bring a guitar.  I thought we we’re just talking.  Am I ready for what?”

“Are you ready to meet with the cast?  I want you to meet with them before I cast them and have them all in a room for rehearsal”

“Uh…sure”

We walked downstairs to the studio and there was a group of 14 people there.  I was introduced to the cast and then given the floor.

Step 3  – Work WITH people, Adapt and Do You

When thrown into situations like this, I’ve found that you just have to adapt to the needs of the people you’re working with and then work with the skills you have.  Since the play was about a Liberian child soldier, I felt that percussion was going to be a key element in the production.  I moved out some tables and then had people step in time and perform interlocking rhythms based on some West African drum patterns that I learned and adapted them to the situation to see where the actor’s rhythmic skills were.

Then I had them hold pitches and move them around to a few different chords so se where their ears were.

The whole thing was over in about 15 minutes.  The atmosphere in the room was electric.  They were psyched about what we were doing.

A day later, I was listed as the musical director for the production.

Step 4 – Do The Work

This is what separates the professionals from the amateurs of the world.

  • Professionals develop a set of skills and understand what those are.
  • Professionals show up.
  • If they know what they’re showing up to – they prepare for it as best they can as time allows.
  • If they don’t know what they’re showing up to – they adapt their strengths to the situation at hand.
  • Once professionals get the gig – they keep it by doing the work the gig requires.  If they need additional skills – they develop them to the point that they need to.  The professional  guitarist who plays well but needs to sing backup for the gig will shed those vocal parts as much as needed to keep that gig.

That’s it for now!

I have more shows with KoriSoron coming up in the area and we’re going to be doing some videos for our good friends at ZT Amps.  You can check out all of our comings and goings at KoriSoron.com.

As always – Thanks for reading!

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2014: How Not To Repeat The Mistakes Of The Past (Or Nothing Ever Got Done With An Excuse)

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It’s that time of year again…

(This is a repost of something I wrote for the end of 2009.  The dates and information have been updated, and this has become one of the few yearly repost traditions I indulge in.)

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At the end of every year, I typically take the last week between Christmas and New Years to wind down and center.  It not only helps me take stock of what worked and didn’t work for me in in the year but also helps me make sure I’m on track for what I want to get done moving forward.  As George Santayana said,

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

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As 2013 draws to a close, I think back to many conversations I had with people at the end of 2009.  At that time, it seemed like everyone I talked to said the same thing, “2009 was such a bad year.  2010 has to be better.  It just has to.”

Now it seems I’m listening to the same sentiment with the same people about 2013 and the coming 2014.  And in some ways they have a valid point.  Listening to their circumstances, 2013 certainly offered some of these people a tough blow – but regardless of their circumstances, I believe that, unless they experience a windfall of good fortune, I will hear the same sentiments echoed at the end of 2014.  There’s a reason for this:

“If you always do what you’ve always done – you’ll always get what you always got” – anon

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While I fully appreciate the merits of planning and goal setting – life will throw you any number of curveballs that may make a meticulously laid out plan get derailed.

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A good plan has to be countered with an ability to improvise (as need be) to make sure that even if your mode of transportation is disabled, that you are still on the path to achieve your goals.

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“Improvisation as a practice is the focus of an idea through an imposed restriction.  This restriction could either be self-imposed or could be imposed upon the improviser through other means.

Improvisation as it relates to common experience can be seen in the example of the car that stops running in the middle of a trip.  A person experienced in auto repair may attempt to pop the hood of the car to see if they can ascertain how to repair the vehicle.  Or they may try to flag down help.  Or they may try to use a cell phone to contact a garage.  The point being that within the context of a vehicle malfunction, different actions are improvised based on the improviser’s facility with both the situation at hand and the tools at their disposal.

….life is essentially an improvisation.  As individuals we come into each day not exactly knowing what will happen.  We know that there is an eventual end, but we don’t know when or how it will end.  But we continue to improvise, because it is in both the active improvisation (the present), the skill set and knowledge of that improvisation (the past) and in the philosophical/worldview/goals guiding our improvisational choices (the future) that we create meaning.”

 

If you approach life’s problems with the same mindset you’ve always had 

-and your new year’s resolutions run contrary to that mindset –

your resolutions are doomed.

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I say this as a seasoned graduate of the school of hard knocks and as a person who found that while success feels a lot better – ultimately failure is a much more thorough teacher.

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2013 had some great ups and downs for me and now there are a number of life and playing upgrades I’m going to put into practice in 2014 to address the things that didn’t work for me.  For those of you who are interested in making a real change the new year – here’s what worked for me going into 2013 that I plan on using this year as well:

 

Know the big picture.

If you have a goal – know why you have the goal.  As Victor Frankl once said, “He who has a why can endure almost any how.“

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Take stock of what you have done and identify what needs to change.

Have you done things that work towards that goal?  If so, what have you really done? What worked?  What didn’t work?  And what parameters can you put in place to make it work better?

What decisions did you make that set you back and how could you alter those decisions in the future?

Sometimes honesty is brutal but this isn’t about beating yourself up.  It’s about taking a realistic stock of what worked and what didn’t work for you in the year, reinforcing that things that work for you and discarding what didn’t work for you.

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Revolution not resolution

People typically make resolutions because they recognize a need for change in their life.

Personally, change hasn’t been about making a momentary decision as a knee jerk reaction to something (which usually lasts as long as the time it took to make that decision).

The long-lasting changes in my life have come from making lifestyle changes, setting priorities and working within those changes.  Change is not a temporary compromise to a current observation but is instead a revolt against habitual modes of thinking and operation. 

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Positive habits

Making something a daily positive habit (like brushing your teeth) makes it easier to maintain over the long haul. (See my post about the value of rituals for more on this.)

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“Don’t make excuses – make it right” –  Al Little

People make excuses for things all the time.  No one cares about excuses because nothing ever got done with an excuse.  People (typically) only care about results.

There will undoubtably be moments that you relapse into older habits.  Instead of making excuses for why it happened – just acknowledge it and move past it. When you fall off the bike, it’s not about sitting down and nursing your scrapes.  It’s about getting back up on the bike again.  As it says in The Hagakure, “Seven times down – eight times up”

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There’s strength in numbers

Try to surround yourself with supportive people.

  • Not enabling people who will make changes more difficult for you.
  • Not negative or judgmental people who will scoff at your desire for change

Like minded people who have goals and are motivated.

Talk to the friends and family who will give honest and supportive feedback.  Here’s another important tip – don’t burn those people out with your goals.  The people around you have their own lives, so if every conversation becomes about you and your goals, you’re going to see less and less of those people!

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In addition to (or in some cases in lieu of) that support, you may want to look into some free online accountability sites like Idonethis.com (post on this here) or Wunderlist.com which maintains a private calendar to help observe progress.

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Commit to One Change

It’s easy to get hung up and overwhelmed with the specifics of a long term goal.  Try making one lifestyle change and commit to seeing that through.  (Again, you can read my post about the value of rituals for more on this.)

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Be motivated to do more but be grateful for what you have

Finally, I’d like to thank everyone who took a moment to come here and read my writing.  I hope this helps you in some way shape or form and I hope that 2014 is your best year yet.

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A Note From A Show

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It was back in Boston.

I had walked into a small club called TT the bear’s (which I had played on many occasions before) to see my friend’s band play, and one of the opening bands was an early incarnation of The Willard Grant Conspiracy.

When I see bands on SNL and there are 10 people on stage individually playing nothing  and it cumulatively sounds like 3 competent musicians are playing it drives me nuts.  In this case, there were six or eight people on stage (all playing acoustic instruments …some acoustic guitars, a violin, mandolin, bass, and Robert Fisher’s vocals) and it sounded enormous.  They devoured the air in the room and for 40 minutes or so –  we were collectively sucked into a black hole and left staring in mute wonder at this immense vortex we were in and then we were spit back out into the reality of a small club with sticky floors.

There wasn’t a II V I or an altered chord in sight. The time signatures were common.  Nothing faster than an 1/8th note was played.  It was a number of musicians playing the same rhythms (and playing off of that rhythm) to create a specific immersive sound.  Everything was in service to the vocal and the song.

It gets easy to get caught up in what this person is doing or what that person is doing online, but it’s the moments that move you that stay with you forever.  I can tell you to go check out their Flying Low cd, but the communal moment I had with Willard Grant and a few other people in that small room is what stays with me as I listen to “House Is Not a Home” as I type this.  My experience in listening to those songs will always be tied to that moment.

Here’s the biggest secret I can tell you about musical performance.

The single biggest factor pulling off any performance for a live audience is conviction.

If you have it, you can sit on an avoid note and everyone will nod their heads, if you don’t have it you can hit every note with MIDI-like precision and elicit yawns in response.

All the shedding you do is really to get the material under your fingers so you can play it with conviction when you perform.  Some people tap into that with a minimal amount of musical skill and training.  Some people train their whole lives and never find it.  When you speak with authority, people listen to what you have to say (you do have the musical vocabulary and skill to help sustain what’s happening yes? – I’d argue that people who perform with real conviction find natural rhythm, dynamics and other elements intuitively in many cases – the so called “musical” considerations fall into line with the force of the message being delivered.)  Now that audience might ignore it if it doesn’t continue to move or reach them, but it at least gets their ear.

It get’s easy to get caught up in the technique or the application of what we do and loose the forest looking for the tree.

Guitarists serve the guitar but musicians serve the song.  Sometimes that’s Willard Grant, sometimes that’s seeing a video of Yngwie killing it with Alcatrazz on a live show in Japan. Sometimes that’s the song you’re playing and sometimes it’s the song of your heart, but whichever one you’re playing – play it like you’re opening that vortex and bring people in.

I hope this helps in some way and as always, thanks for reading!

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PS – if you’re happen to be in Gloversville,NY on Saturday come check out my clinic at the Gloversville library at noon.  (tinyurl.com/gloversvilleguitar)

I’ll have my guitar…and some books…and notes.  Beaucoup notes at that!

On Education: Learning And Knowing

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I’ve talked at length about thinking versus knowing,  (Even though the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, the difference between the two is that while you can read something and think it, knowing something requires experience with it and implies the ability to utilize it.  Knowing something at a deep level means that you can adapt it and manipulate it to serve you.) but I wanted to expand out from that basic idea in this post.

Having said that, it would be easy to come to the conclusion that knowledge is the summit of education.  As important as knowledge is however, I believe that knowing something is actually far less important than learning and/or discovering something.

Learning something means bridging the chasm between unfamiliar and familiar.  It usually means making mistakes and requires you to make some kind of leap to get to the thing you’re striving for.

“It’s the journey not the destination.”  Right?  You might have read that as a caption to a professionally taken photo right off someone’s cubicle wall so it has to be true.  But plenty of people meander through life and don’t change for the better.  I watched a junkie on the street the other day digging infected scabs from his arm and popping them in his mouth while begging for change.  I doubt that he’s going to tell you that it’s all been about the journey.

I don’t believe that it’s enough to just take a journey,  The  journey taken should be a mindful one.  It’s about paying attention to things on the journey and learning from them and not the journey itself.

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It’s about seeing the world in a different way and becoming a different person than you started off being.

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Guac-a-mole!

Consider this for a moment if you will.  An avocado is a fruit with a large nut in the middle.

As a plant, the primary purpose of the avocado is to eventually become another tree by falling from the tree and releasing the nut to become another tree.

To a person, the avocado nut is inedible,  You pop it out of the center (if you’re eating the whole thing) and savor remaining the fruit.

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If education is an avocado, knowledge is the nut and learning is the fruit.

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Knowledge has a deeper purpose.  It has implications that can go well beyond what you or I can imagine.  It provides sustenance in the long-term and allows you do use things (outside of their original purpose when necessary) to reach a bigger goal.

Learning provides daily sustenance.  It feeds you and gives you energy to both be in the preset and look to the future.

They’re part of the same fruit.  And you can’t have one without the other.

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And now, a big-ticket item about knowledge versus learning.

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Knowledge allows you to succeed but learning allows you to mess up, screw up and (in a best/worse case scenario) to fail.

Being able to fail in a constructive (and safe way) is important.

First off, to fail at something means you tried something.  You took action of some kind.  If you don’t try you never succeed right?

(and if you never fail then you probably aren’t trying too hard.)

To succeed, means you’ll have to try again.

Secondly, you can’t have success unless you have something to measure success against.  To succeed means to successfully accomplish something… to overcome something.  If you succeed at everything you stay at the same mediocre level because you’re never challenged to go further.

Failing implies that something went wrong, and in working to overcome that result – it means you’ll have to learn.

And learning something means you can begin to know something.

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No one wants to “fail” at anything – but I don’t think failing is always a bad thing.  It’s a tried and true path to success and it’s one of the greatest (and most thorough) teachers you’ll ever find.

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In a related note, if you take a moment to reminisce about things you know versus things that you’re learning (or have learned recently), you might notice that you have a different reaction or feeling to what you’re learning (exciting) versus what you know (yawn).

In guitar, you practice what you’re learning but you play what you know.  And that’s a big reason why you want to be learning whenever you can, so you can increase what you really know.

That’s it for now.

As always thanks for reading!

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Detriment Versus Determination

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I wanted to take a moment to talk about balance in terms of vision, execution and success.  And I’d like to do this because, in what has been a challenging transition moving to NY,  I’ve come across a number of posts with well-meaning advice that all seem to work on the universal formula of: following your vision = success.

“You will always be successful if you follow your vision.”

That’s just simply not true.

It’s not only a case of gleaning the wrong lesson from a given situation, it’s a case of giving advice to people that makes them think that they’ve failed when they followed their vision and it didn’t bring them the result that they planned on.

Detriment

I’ve talked here before about the television show Shark Tank (and the much better BBC series Dragon’s Den that it’s based on), and one thing that happens consistently on the show(s) is people investing everything they have (and more) into a bad business.  They’ll present an idea that might seem novel, but when the investors get into the financials it becomes obvious that the business isn’t working.

It’s heartbreaking to watch because, as an outside observer, you can immediately see it’s a bad investment.  The people who have created it however are so passionate and have invested so much of themselves that they’re convinced turning the business around is merely a matter of determination.  They’re convinced that if they just keep at it and invest more money into it, it will succeed.  They’re convinced that it’s some shortage of resources, execution or acumen that’s causing the business to fail.

The Golem

The history of the Golem goes back much earlier in Jewish folklore than the story that I’m telling here,  but the most famous story of the Golem dates back to 16th century Prague.  Rabbi Loew, the chief Rabbi in the Prague ghetto, sculpted a figure out of mud (The Golem) and then (through a secret series of steps) brought him to life to protect the locals from antisemitic attacks.  The Golem went on a murderous rampage and to be stopped, Rabbi Loew erased the first letter of the word “emet” (truth or reality) on the Golem’s forehead leaving the Hebrew word “met” (dead).  The Golem turned back to lifeless mud and, legend has it, was taken to Rabbi Loew’s attic to be reactivated in the event that it was needed again.

Redefining “Success”

Now I don’t think that I’m telling tales out of school, but you can devote the rest of your life to carving anthropomorphic shapes out of the dirt and not make a golem.  Maybe you’ll prove me wrong!  But I don’t think that it’s a constructive use of time – if you’re trying to make a rampaging golem.

If, however, you like working with your hands and like sculpting golems you might find yourself getting good at it.  You might start creating something unique that gets the attention of other people, who ask if you could make a smaller version out of clay.  Or perhaps you document all of the golems that you create with photographs and release a photo book on The Golem project.

The point is, you can be successful in whatever you do but

  • it might not be the success that you planned on
  • any alternative success will only come out of hard, passionate work of high quality that connects with other people.
  • Finding alternate success requires being open to other possibilities.

Determination – A Guitar Story

When I went to Berklee, I had a couple of hometown awards for playing under my belt and had built up quite a bit of speed from practicing the same licks over and over again.

I also didn’t have any formal instruction.  I was practicing things with bad technique in a vacuum.  So while I could play quickly and energetically, I didn’t have anything to say and what I could say I could only express quickly and inarticulately.

I had inadvertently modeled my guitar playing after the way an auctioneer speaks at an auction.

“ihavetwentyfivetwentyfivedoihear3030thirthinthebackdoihear35…”

When I got to Berklee, my first teacher Doug (a killin’ Jazz player – btw), really took me to task on my picking and my timing.  He told me that I’d have to start all over technically.

I was pretty resistant to this idea.  So I said, “to Hell with that” and just kept doing what I did.

And like the people on Shark Tank/Dragon’s Den – my work stagnated.

Sure I got faster, and a little cleaner.  But, as a player I wasn’t getting any better.

Fast forward to going to CalArts. I remember the first lesson with Miroslav Tadic well.  I barely slept the night before and when we met,  I talked about how I wanted to learn repertoire, how I wanted to be able to negotiate odd time signatures in a more fluent way and how I really wanted to work on ornamentation and stylistic elements of Baltic music.

He had me play for about 30 seconds and said, “Your hands are a mess.”  Your fret hand is completely compromised for your playing.”  He told me I’d have to put intensive work in to fix it.

Again, I was resistant to the idea but realizing where I went wrong at Berklee, I decided to give it a shot.  I also took some lessons with Jack Sanders and Jack reinforced everything that Miroslav told me. Then I started the real work.

I started relearning everything that used my pinky.  Ultimately, I had to re-learn everything.

That was a while ago… and I’m STILL working on it.

“Success” – A “Career” Story

One of the primary reasons I went to grad school was because the local music scene I lived in was in a death spiral (in terms of how things had always been done) and I didn’t see that changing in any other scene. I thought if I could get a teaching gig at the collegiate level that it would a.) be something that I could engage in passionately and do really well and b.) give me the financial stability to do what I wanted to do with my musical interests on the side.

When I got out in 2008, the job market was grim.  The following financial crisis made it even worse, and I realized that (in an ever shrinking pool of positions and downsized departments) that (for the few positions I was seeing open) no one was going to even look at my resume without a doctorate.  And a doctorate wasn’t in my future.

I realized that the only way I was going to get into that building was through the back door.  So I worked on books and tried to establish myself more as a player.  And then, I was informed that without a lengthy peer-reviewed process with a limited release on a “name” publisher that no one in academe was going to take my books seriously.

(This despite the fact that no one in academe has released 1200 pages of guitar reference texts, much less done so in the same academic year.  There’s an extended rant in my pocket about the whole outdated academe publishing scam that I’ll save for another post.)

It was the last reinforcement I needed.  For the foreseeable future, I was going to have to go it on my own.

If I viewed going to CalArts solely as a stepping stone to a university faculty position, it would (thus far) be a profound failure.

But I don’t look at it that way.

In addition to the incredible knowledge I got there, my books would never have been done if I didn’t go to CalArts.  I never would have gotten the video game credits I have if I wasn’t there. This blog wouldn’t exist and I wouldn’t be writing for Guitar-Muse.

Even more importantly, I never would have met (and played with) people like Miroslav Tadic, Vinny Golia, Randy Gloss, Susie Allen, Wadada Leo Smith, Butch Morris, Carmina Escobar, Daren Burns, Sahba Motallebi, Craig Bunch, Eric Klerks, Sarah Phillips, Andre LaFosse, George McMullin, Don McLeod, John French, Jonathan Wilson or the dozens of other people I was fortunate enough to meet and play with being there.  Some of these people will be lifelong friends and (while my creditors would disagree) you can’t put a price on that.

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In other words, it paid off in different ways and was a success in other ways, but not in the way I initially planned for it to be.

 

And so…

Be determined and passionate and present in whatever you do, but be balanced enough to know when you’re making progress, and when you’re trying to make a Golem.

Like the first lesson that Miroslav gave me, putting that advice into practice might take a while to implement.  But trust me, it’s a good use of your time.

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I hope this helps!  As always, thanks for reading!

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Thinking, Knowing And Learning

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The difference between information and knowledge


The deepest educational experiences that I’ve had all occurred at the school of hard knocks.  As a student in a traditional music school, I had blocks absorbing information that didn’t seem relevant to what I was doing because I didn’t see how it could relate to what I wanted to do (to be fair, this was also because most of the instructors I had were incapable to presenting the information in a way that showed how it could be adapted to individual styles).  

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Much of the specific aspects of my style have come about from taking ideas or approaches that were interesting and finding ways to integrate them into what I do.  This might mean hearing a phrase or a chord progression and working it into my repertoire, or exploring unfamiliar ideas or new options in a solo or a compositional challenge.

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A big part of gaining information is knowing what questions to ask and finding the right people to initially answer them.

Gaining knowledge, however,  is knowing what question is asked, what the real question being asked is and answering them yourself.

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I say this because while I can say, “If you’re looking for a Melodic Minor application – try playing a melodic minor scale from the b7 of a minor chord (i.e. Bb Melodic minor over a C minor chord)” to a student, this is just information.  Knowledge of the concept is evident when the student is improvising over a tune and gets to a C minor 7 chord and starts playing phrases that they hear from Bb melodic minor over the chord.  It comes after playing the scale over the chord, developing melodies and phrases based on the idea and learning it on a deeper level.  In other words, when the question is asked, “what do I play over this chord?” the player answers the question.

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This is the difference between thinking and knowing.  

To think something, you only have to read it.  

To know something, you have to experience it.

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Learning

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Learning then, is really a bridge between exposure to an idea and knowledge of that idea. In an over-simplified manner, I  see learning as a process like this:

  • Exposure to an idea, “Did you know that you can do this?”
  • Exploration and  integration of that idea, “I’m trying to see how I can do this.”
  • Knowledge of an idea, “I’m doing this.”

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The Thinking Trap

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In the process above, thinking occurs at every step between exposure and knowledge.  In other words, you can think something but know nothing about it.  This is where you get people writing scathing product reviews of things they’ve never owned or used based on manufacturer’s specs or people using dogmatic approaches to situations based on someone else’s “knowledge”.  It’s a perceptual trap to equate thinking and knowing something and for me, this has been a hard-fought and life long process of recognizing that differentiation, understanding it and integrating it but perhaps posting this observation here will save some of you some time.  

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As always, thanks for reading!

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For those of you who are interested, there’s some further clarification for how this relates to my pedagogical approach here.

The Perils of Panaceas and Instant Gratification

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Hello!

Thanks for coming to this page.

This post has been moved to Get-A-Grip.com.

You can read it here.

Thanks!

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2012: How Not To Repeat The Mistakes Of The Past (Or Nothing Ever Got Done With An Excuse)

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(This is a repost of something I wrote for the end of 2010.  The dates and information have been updated, and I suspect this will be one of the few yearly repost traditions I indulge in.)

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I had hoped to get a few more things done before the end of the year, but decided instead to take the last week to wind down and center.  I find that this not only helps me take stock of what worked and didn’t work for me in 2011 but also helps me make sure I’m on track for what I want to get done in the new year.  As George Santayana said,

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“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

As 2011 draws to a close, I think back to many conversations I had with people at the end of 2009.  At that time, it seemed like everyone I talked to said the same thing, “2009 was such a bad year.  2010 has to be better.  It just has to.”

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Now it seems I’m listening to the same sentiment with the same people about 2011 and the coming 2012.  And in some ways they have a valid point.  Listening to their circumstances, 2011 certainly offered some of these people a tough blow – but regardless of their circumstances, I believe that, unless they experience a windfall of good fortune, I will hear the same sentiments echoed at the end of 2012.  There’s a reason for this:

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“If you always do what you’ve always done – you’ll always get what you always got” – anon

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While I fully appreciate the merits of planning and goal setting – life will throw you any number of curveballs that may make a meticulously laid out plan get derailed.

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A good plan has to be countered with an ability to improvise (as need be) to make sure that even if your mode of transportation is disabled, that you are still on the path to achieve your goals.

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“Improvisation as a practice is the focus of an idea through an imposed restriction.  This restriction could either be self-imposed or be imposed upon the improviser through other means. Improvisation as it relates to common experience can be seen in the example of the car that stops running in the middle of a trip.  A person experienced in auto repair may attempt to pop the hood of the car to see if they can ascertain how to repair the vehicle.  Or they may try to flag down help.  Or they may try to use a cell phone to contact a garage.  The point being that within the context of a vehicle malfunction, different actions are improvised based on the improviser’s facility with both the situation at hand and the tools at their disposal….life is essentially an improvisation.  As individuals we come into each day not exactly knowing what will happen.  We know that there is an eventual end, but we don’t know when or how it will end.  But we continue to improvise, because it is in both the active improvisation (the present), the skill set and knowledge of that improvisation (the past) and in the philosophical/worldview/goals guiding our improvisational choices (the future) that we create meaning.”

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If you approach life’s problems with the same mindset you’ve always had 

-and your new year’s resolution runs contrary to that mindset –

your resolutions are doomed.

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I say this as a seasoned graduate of the school of hard knocks and as a person who found that while success felt a lot better – failure was a much more thorough teacher.

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2011 had some great ups and downs for me and now there are a number of life and playing upgrades I’m going to put into practice in 2012 to address the things that didn’t work for me.  For those of you who are interested in making a real change the new year – here’s what worked for me going into 2011 that I plan on using this year as well:

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Know the big picture.

If you have a goal – know why you have the goal.  As Victor Frankl once said, “He who has a why can endure almost any how.”

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Take stock of what you have done and identify what needs to change.

Have you done things that work towards that goal?  If so, what have you really done? What worked?  What didn’t work?  And what parameters can you put in place to make it work better?

What decisions did you make that set you back and how could you alter those decisions in the future?

Sometimes honesty is brutal but this isn’t about beating yourself up.  It’s about taking a realistic stock of what worked and what didn’t work for you in the year, reinforcing that things that work for you and discarding what didn’t work for you.

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Revolution not resolution

People typically make resolutions because they recognize a need for change in their life.  For me – it really isn’t about making a momentary decision as a knee jerk reaction to something (which usually lasts as long as the time it took to make that decision).  The long-lasting changes in my life have come from making lifestyle changes, setting priorities and working within those changes.  It’s a revolt against what was done before instead of a compromise for a current mode of operation.

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Positive habits

Making something a daily positive habit (like brushing your teeth) makes it easier to maintain over the long haul.

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“Don’t make excuses – make it right” –  Al Little

People make excuses for things all the time.  No one cares about excuses because nothing ever got done with an excuse.  People (typically) only care about results.

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There will undoubtably be moments that you relapse into older habits.  Instead of making excuses for why it happened – just acknowledge it and move past it. When you fall off the bike, it’s not about sitting down and nursing your scrapes.  It’s about getting back up on the bike again.  As it says in The Hagakure, “Seven times down – eight times up”

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There is strength in numbers

Try to surround yourself with supportive people.

  • Not enabling people who will make changes more difficult for you.
  • Not negative or judgmental people who will scoff at your desire for change

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Talk to the friends and family who will give honest and supportive feedback.  Here’s another important tip – don’t burn those people out with your goals.  The people around you have their own lives, so if every conversation becomes about you and your goals, you’re going to see less and less of those people!

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In addition to (or in some cases in lieu of) that support, you may want to look into some free online accountability sites like Idonethis.com (post on this here) or Wunderlist.com which maintains a private calendar to help observe progress.

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Be motivated to do more but be grateful for what you have

In a final 2011 observation, I’d like to thank everyone who took a moment to come here and read what I was doing.  GuitArchitecture had a 800 % increase in web traffic this year!  It’s going to get even bigger next year and it would all be impossible without the people reading.  So thank you all again and I hope that 2012 is your best year yet.

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Melville, Madness and Practicing – Or Finding The Deeper Lesson Part 2

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Condensed Cliff Notes

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Years ago, I found a back issue of National Lampoon that had a faux ad for Condensed Cliff Notes (“for people who didn’t have time to read the original”).  The joke was that major literary works were just boiled down into one sentence descriptions that couldn’t possibly encompass the scope of the book.  The Condensed Cliff Notes for Moby Dick was, “A whale bites off a man’s leg and he can’t forget about it.”

I don’t know how many of you have read Moby Dick.  I hated it when I had to read it in high school but really got to appreciate it when I was in college and read it again.  One of the central characters in the book was Captain Ahab, a man who not only couldn’t forget about the whale that bit his leg off – but was on monomaniacal mission of revenge that enveloped everyone around him in its wake.   At the end of the book, it’s also his undoing.

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The Ahab effect and practicing

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The nature of practicing music (seemingly endless repetition) makes it easy to fall into the Ahab role of obsessively trying to get a musical passage under your fingers.  I once had a lick I couldn’t get down.  It was challenging, but it certainly was something that was well with in my skill set.

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But the more I worked at it  – the worse it got.

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I’d work on this lick everyday for hours and get the metronome to a certain point.  When I came back to it, I’d have to knock the metronome back down 20 bpm – often 10 bpm lower than where I started the lick the day before!

You can imagine what this did for my sanity.

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After a week of this – I started noticing a few things:

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  • My goal line kept changing.  As I was working on the lick, I kept finding things wrong that I wanted to correct.  I was playing it clean, and then hear other technical issues when I switched to distortion. I was flubbing certain notes, and would go back to fix those.  I was rushing the parts where there were position changes.  I was over thinking it and the more energy I was putting into it the worse it got.  I was actually getting better at playing it, but because I kept adjusting the standard of what I was hearing I seemed further and further away from the goal.
  • I was in a rush.  I was putting all of this emphasis on this lick because I wanted to use it in a live context and  (finally)
  • I was hung up about the fact that I SHOULD be able to play it.

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The operative terms here are, “hung up” and “should”.

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Should is a faulty term. It implies value judgements that are hard, if not impossible to live up to and negates reality.   This might sound really  touchy-feely  to some people but this is the type of mindset that trips up musicians.  It’s why people get carpel tunnel (or Focal Dystonia)  – because they go all Ahab on something and assume that if they just work harder, that they’re going to get results quicker.

Everyone is different and this approach may work. for some people but it never worked for me.

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Here’s what did work for me.

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  • I got some distance and took a break.  I stopped playing for a couple fo days and came back to it fresh.
  • When did come back to it I had the lick down, but it taught me to try to approach all practicing more meditatively.  I noticed things that were wrong and worked on adjusting them rather than beating myself up about why I couldn’t do something.  When I did slip up and get angry or riled up – I made a note of that and tried smiling instead.

I found that I was really listening on a deeper level than I was before and using practicing to get to a deeper part of myself. I was really getting into the nuances of what I was playing and digging deeper into the pocket than I every had.  I noticed technical things that weren’t working and ultimately – I made a series of changes that had major technical ramifications for me in the long run.

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All from one lick.

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Anything has that potential to open the door to deeper expression.  But you won’t find it if all of your energy and attention is fixated on something.

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In the next post, I’ll have some lesson material that uses approaches from my Melodic Patterns book, and we’ll get a glimpse into just how tricky playing 4 notes can be.

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Thanks for reading!

-SC

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