Working With Limitations Or How (Not) To Write A Book Part II

Posted on January 27, 2013 by GuitArchitecture

Hello everyone!

As I write this, I am still in editing / revising mode and doing the final clean up on the latest GuitArchitect’s Guide To: book involving 12-tone patterns. For those of you engaging in large-scale projects, I thought I’d offer a few observations about various parts of the process and, perhaps, give you some ideas that you can apply to your things in your daily life as well.

On “Easy” Projects

As I’ve been writing each of these books (and supplementing that with posts here and Guitar-Muse articles, interviews and reviews), I knew that my writing style was evolving and that my pedagogical model was changing. While I was happy with the content I was releasing for my other books, there was one past effort that was tormenting me; Symmetrical 12-Tone Patterns For Improvisation.

Symmetrical 12-Tone Patterns was my first published book in 2006. (There’s a short book of prose called Hostile Terrain and a 300-page book entitled The Guitar Pattern Reference Book Vol. 1, that will never see the light of day – making the “new” book the 9th or 10th I’ve worked on depending on how you’re counting it.)

Symmetrical 12-Tone Patterns had its roots in the process I explored in The Guitar Pattern Book. I started working on it when I realized there was a way to systematically re-order a 12-tone row and get some pattern-based sounds that were “out”. I was looking for a dissonant angle to add to my playing but what I ultimately got was substantially deeper.

The Guitar Pattern Book

The Guitar Pattern Book was a reference text I devised that would (ultimately) show every possible permutation of 1, 2 and 3-note per string patterns on the guitar. Since I didn’t have access to any kind of graphic design program at the time I was writing it, I created a template made several hundred free copies and began charting them all out. With a marker. In off hours. In down time. Anytime I had a moment, I was sitting with a marker and a paper and plotting these out with excruciating detail.

Printing them at Kinkos, the cost was about $30 a book. This was pre-print on demand and I knew that I’d never sell the book at $60. So I mailed out a few copies to see if anyone was interested in the idea (I never got a single reply back) and shelved the idea.

As a commercial venture, this project that I sank hundreds (if not thousands) of hours into was a dismal failure. As an experience however, it proved to be invaluable to me.

It taught me the value of discipline. Real discipline. At the time, I was working in a dismal office job and in a relationship that was self-destructing. I remember waking up every day dreading going to work, and then being at work and dreading coming home. That went on for the better part of a year before I finally figured out how to get out of that situation but the intellectual rigor that went into systematically plotting out the details in this book, was a key factor in me getting through that situation as it gave me something else to focus on.

Most Importantly, it taught me that it could be done. It taught me that even with no money, or resources that I could write a book. It taught me that you can bring something into the world on your own with sheer determination. Because, particularly at the early stages of anything, you can not count on anyone to help you. Once you get established, it’s much easier to get people aligned with you, but initially people are not going to want to spend time or money) on an unknown quantity.

Symmetrical 12-Tone Patterns

With the previous experience of the Guitar Pattern book behind me, I didn’t flinch several years later at the work that would be required when I had the realization that you could create symmetrical rows. I’ve already talked about the actual break down of the divisions in this post, but let me give you a scope of the work that went into the creation of the tables in the book. Let’s say that we’re talking about 2 sets of 6-note patterns. The process of documenting them went something like this.

C (m2) B(m2) Bb(m2) A(m2) Ab(m2) G /

Gb (m2) F (m2) E (m2) Eb(m2) D(m2) Db

or m2-m2-m2-m2-m2-m2

Then I would check (by “check” – I mean write out the interval pattern until it was either complete or discarded because there was a duplicate note)

m2-m2-m2-m2-m2-M2

m2-m2-m2-m2-m2-m3

m2-m2-m2-m2-m2-M3

m2-m2-m2-m2-m2-P4

m2-m2-m2-m2-m2-P5

m2-m2-m2-m2-m2-m6

m2-m2-m2-m2-m2-M6

m2-m2-m2-m2-m2-m7

m2-m2-m2-m2-m2-M7

Before moving onto:

m2-m2-m2-m2-M2-m2

And starting it all over again ad nauseum. Not all of the patterns worked. This was done for all 2, 3, 4 and 6-note divisions. If I were doing it now, I’d hire a computer science student to generate the lists in a couple of days. At the time, I just knew I’d have to knuckle down and do it.

For a year.

Every waking hour that I wasn’t working, working out, playing or teaching guitar, I was sitting with a paper and a pen. Endlessly running intervals to create the lists.

I should mention that I wasn’t doing this to write a book. That thought existed as maybe a possibility. I thought at best I might be able to publish an article on it somewhere.

Getting Creamed by Creamer

It’s funny now that I have that thought about publishing an article, because at about the 3/4’s mark of this research, I was sitting in the library taking a break from writing and reading back issues of Guitar Player Magazine and what do I see?

A full six page article by Dave Creamer on symmetrical 12-tone patterns.

I wanted to vomit because all I could see was all the work I did going down the tubes. Dave’s article was brilliant. It was short, and succinct and (more importantly) showed how to use the ideas in a musical way.

At the same time, as a guitarist in Boston I was at a crossroads. I was playing in some really good bands, but they just weren’t getting traction of any kind. I kept getting involved in projects that were taking a lot of time for rehearsals but weren’t recording or gigging consistently. It was 2005. I saw the writing on the wall and realized that the live scene was going to go down the tubes before it had any kind of resurgence. So I decided to go to Grad school and get a degree to teach guitar and follow a different plan for gigging.

Both of these factors together made me decide to take all this work I had done and put it into a book. I decided that I couldn’t be intimidated by the fact that Dave Creamer had already done something brilliant with the same idea, I decided that I’d just have to move forward anyways. And In applying to Grad school I knew that no one else was going to be able to send in a 200+ page book as a part of an ADMISSIONS package to a school. So I went all in and filled in the pattern based material with some explanation and took it to Lulu.

2 months later – I was a published author.

There was one problem.

For some reason, the fonts didn’t embed correctly in the text. This meant that every sharp and flat was reversed. Lulu tech support had no idea why it was happening. So I had to send ANOTHER Kinkos bound copy in to supplement the book of errors I had already sent in with an extensive apology.

I still got into grad school. And, as a bonus, I had a book out in the world. I was now a self-published author.

This book experience taught me a lot as well.

1. It taught me the value of proofing! Had I caught the initial mistakes in the printing, I would have saved myself the agony of having to create a revised version and getting it out the door.

2. It taught me to stick with ideas if they’re good. I could have abandoned the book when I found out about Dave’s work but instead I just went forward.

3. It reminded me to work with what I had. I didn’t have a graphic design program, but I had word – so I did the layout in Word. I took the other guitar books that I had and carefully studied the overall layout and applied those ideas to the design. This experience was invaluable to me later as I learned to really get whatever I could out of whatever software I was using.

The GuitArchitect’s Guide To Symmetrical 12-Tone Patterns

With the release of my Guide To Chord Scales book, I knew that I was at least a year out from having another book done and an idea hit me. In the years that had passed since the Symmetrical 12-Tone Patterns book, I was less enamored with the book. I had written the book as a general guide to 12-tone patterns and hadn’t made it guitar specific. I decided that the easiest thing would be to retire the current 12-tone book and make some revisions to it (add a new introduction, update some of the material and add some guitar tabs instead of standard notation) and it would be good to go.

I seriously underestimated the scope of this project.

In addition to the layout revisions and headaches caused by some of the initial design decisions that I had made with the book, in reviewing the material I realized that my entire relationship with the material had changed over time.

So where I thought this would be putting in an extra 20-30 hours to have a “new” and improved book up, what happened instead was a complete re-imagining of the material in content, scope and execution taking hundreds of hours of investment.

Having said that I’m rapidly nearing the February finish line and I’m going back to the excitement level of the 5-year old Scott Collins who woke up at 3 in the morning on Christmas say and spent 3 hours trying to wake his parents up because it was technically Christmas and Santa was already here so why were they sleeping?

What I learned from this book:

1. It’s easy for projects get away from you. If I knew in advance how much time this book would have taken, I would have approached it very differently. Having said that, the book is only coming together as it is because of the particular process that it went through.

So when a project gets away from you, you have to keep your eye on the prize and make sure that the work you’re doing is ultimately going to serve the project.

2. The value of DIY. Most authors sign with publishers because they want someone else to do everything. Let someone else do the editing, the layout, the marketing, the promotion and collect the revenue. Then they wonder why their cut it so small.

As an author (or an independent guitarist) – you’re not going to be able to throw money at every problem the way large publishers can. You’ll have to fix things on your own.

For this book, this was a godsend because it was only in working over the material endlessly that I discovered the best way to convey everything that I wanted to. That never would have happened by just sending my text to someone on elance and having them give it a once over for grammar.

3. I learned to leverage resources. In the previous releases, I was so fixated on being goal oriented and getting the books out the door that I neglected things like covers (though the Repo Man era generic covers were a direct contrast to the depth of the material in the books themselves. So this book has an actual cover:

and I also have to mention Doug Kearns – who’s done proofing of the text that has helped immeasurably. (One bummer about my current process, due to the number of accidentals in the material – automated spell checking doesn’t work. It’s another time-consuming area that wasn’t immediately obvious). Doug was kind enough to do this with other books and I owe him a Skype lesson in addition to the books sent his way. John Harper gave feedback and revisions that Proved invaluable as have Andre Lafosse and Candace Burnham.

Without the input of all those people, the book would be a fraction of what it is. So leverage the support of the people around you.

4. Every success is built off of previous work (successes and failures). The Guitar Pattern Book was really the thing that started everything and if I stopped there I would have just been a filed author. I never would have written this book without the books that came before. Even if this book never sells a single copy, it’s a huge artistic success for me.

Now I need to find a better way to market it than, “The book that answers the question that no one was asking.”

I’ll have a full book out for the Kindle about this year (Nothing Ever Got Done With An Excuse – no I didn’t forget about it, I’ve just been busy). But in the meantime consider this.

Every step taken to get to this book was something that (despite however much of a setback it was at the time) was ultimately a component in moving forward.

Regardless of whatever is happening in your life, be present in what’s going on but use what you are doing as a spring-board to get to the next step – even if you’re unsure of what that step is.

As always, thanks for reading!

-SC

How (Not) To Write A Book

Posted on January 21, 2013 by GuitArchitecture

Hello everyone! I hope this finds you well!

“Oh wait…this is an open mic comedy night now?”

There’s a joke I was told years ago that acts as a surprisingly apt metaphor for creating a book.

A man dies and when he wakes up he’s greeted by a demon who tells him that he’s died and gone to Hell. On the plus side, there is one last choice that he’ll be able to make – namely which of the 3 rooms in Hell he’ll be in for all eternity.

The man is taken to the first room and peers into a vast number of people standing on their heads on a hard wood floor. It looks very uncomfortable.

At room number two, there is an equal number of people standing on their heads but this time instead of hard wood, it’s a solid rock floor. It seems substantially worse than the first room.

The final room is filled with even more people than the first two rooms combined. In this room, everyone is knee deep in the most foul and putrid liquid imaginable, but they’re all drinking coffee. It seems completely disgusting, but at least they’re drinking coffee and that might be the easiest of the three to deal with for eternity. The man chooses this room.

As the demon locked the door behind him, a voice over the intercom barked out, ‘Coffee break’s over! Back on your heads!”

As I write this I’m taking a coffee break from being knee deep in editing my Symmetrical 12-Tone Patterns book and smiling at the parallels.

How Not To Write A Book Or A Blog

Anyone with any productivity training would tell you that my method of creating books (getting inspired, doing all the necessary research, writing a draft and then tackling re-writes, editing, revisions and layout simultaneously) is insane. And from the standpoint of someone thinking in terms of high output writing like NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), they’d be right.

But for me, writing in a purely “efficient” manner doesn’t work that way.

I don’t plan out my blogs (beyond a topic and a point of view) because when I write spontaneously, I can help create the immediacy of conversational speech. That’s the good side of working in that manner.

On the down side, writing that way means that I’m perpetually editing posts, cleaning them up and working endlessly to keep the energy level high while adding some artistry in how I’m conveying ideas.

In other words, I write quickly and edit as long as I’m able. The editing may be where the actual craft comes in, but without that initial energy of getting the ideas on the page the clean up is useless.

This idea is expressed more succinctly in the familiar adage, “You can’t polish a turd.”

Modular Conventional Wisdom

I’ve written before about the differences between data and knowledge and on the importance of common sense, as a means of negotiating the constant overwhelm of data. But what this process has taught me is that most conventional wisdom is really best applied in a modular and contextual manner rather than as an absolute.

It’s easy to grasp onto advice and, in an effort to shorten a learning curve, grasp it as gospel – but the real knowledge you gain in life comes from that learning curve. I’ve learned much more from my mistakes than from my successes, and without those mistakes my successes never would have happened.

Tim Ferriss talks about four hour mastery. That might get you to an avenue to manipulate your way through a martial art competition, but it’s going to get your ass handed to you in street fight.

There are shortcuts for work, but there are no shortcuts for understanding your own OS. There are no shortcuts for finding out what works for you and finding out the best way for you to negotiate the world around you.

Put In The Work But Respect The Process

How I create my books is incredibly time consuming and almost infinitely frustrating in the number of times specifics have to be revisited because of how I re-work the material. But it is only in that re-working that I can see the deeper connections. It’s in that revision that the work adds clarity to strength and it’s in going back and sweating minutiae that the work goes from, say, 95% to 98%, and from 98% to 98.4% or 99%. The agony and the ecstasy both come from working towards those final percentages.

And Don’t Fixate on TIme

So, yes the 12-Tone book is late (Draft one was due Christmas Day!) but more importantly, it’s already the best book that I’ve written thus far and it’s only in the last month that all the substantial changes have happened.

Should I work on being more efficient? Absolutely! But rushing the book out would have made it a much more inferior experience for the reader. Instead of thinking about how much time I’m losing in yet (another) substantial revision, I’m focusing instead on what is coming from investing time in this way.

In writing a book, in playing guitar, in enjoying a walk on a brisk day, the magic is in the details. In being fully engaged in the present. Don’t be in a rush to gloss over them.

As always, thanks for reading.

-SC

p.s. – for a limited time (1/21/13 – 1/25/13) my shortest Kindle title, An Indie Musician Wake Up Call is free on Amazon. You can find that book here and download it for free starting on the 21st. (If you don’t have a Kindle the Kindle app is free on Amazon). If you do happen to download it, please drop me a line and let me know what you think! If you like it, please make sure to check out my other Kindle title, Selling It Versus Selling Out (Applying Lessons From The Business Of Music).

12-Tone Book Update And A ZT Amps Junior Review On Guitar-Muse

Posted on January 16, 2013 by GuitArchitecture

Hello Everyone,

Just a few quick updates here.

First, my 12-tone book is in the final stages of editing. I’m just cleaning up text and typos and working on the cover design. I hope to have it out by early February.

Secondly, I just wrote a new review for ZT Amps Junior Amp for Guitar Muse. You can read that review here.

For anyone interested, I have a series of interviews, reviews, tips and lessons there as well. You can fin that here.

Or just the lessons below.

And a

Jason Becker Documentary Announcement (and lesson)

Jimmy Rosenberg Player Profile (and lesson)

Alex Masi Player Profile (and lesson)

Vinnie Vincent Player Profile (and lesson)

A Rhythmic Ear Training Lesson with Steve Vai’s Velorum

Pragmatic Guitar Soloing Tips

A farewell to exercises and a warm-up lick

Playing With Spiders (or getting more from the 1-2-3-4)

As always, thanks for reading!

-SC

The 3 Secret Problems Of Jazz (And Jazz Is Not Alone)

Posted on December 30, 2012 by GuitArchitecture

A Book Excerpt or Marketing (Slight Return)

One interesting thing about publishing Kindle titles on Amazon is that Amazon does a web search to match various phrases with text you’re submitting. This means that if you have any text on a website that you’ve included in your book, you’ll have to take it down from your site before the book is published.

I understand that the measure is there to protect copyright infringement (and make kindle content exclusive) but as a Kindle book excerpt exists to drive people to your Kindle title (and make money for Amazon), it’s a flawed approach for most authors.

With that in mind, I may have to remove this post eventually, but for now – I hope you enjoy this chapter from Selling It Versus Selling Out (available here on Amazon).

Thanks for reading!

-SC

The 5th person sending me the NPR / Kurt Ellenberger post about the difficulties of being a jazz musician, was the tipping point for me writing a post I’d held off on for a while. I don’t play Jazz but I’m an improvising musician who went through a rigorous Jazz pedagogy, so take please take whatever observations I offer here with a big grain of salt.

I think that Jazz has 3 big problems as a genre, and musicians working in that realm have their work cut out for them to move forward in it.

Duo or Trio wanted for restaurant

(no pay but you can sell your cd)

This gig scenario is actually a microcosm of the problems Jazz faces as a genre.

First, when you drive by a restaurant and you see a sign that says, “Tonight – live jazz!” have you ever turned excitedly to the person next to you and said, “Hey there’s a band playing there tonight! I love Stella By Starlight! Let’s go – maybe they’ll play it!”

No you haven’t. And no one else has either. Because you don’t go to hear the music – you go to hear John McLaughlin or whatever other player interests you – and that’s the first big problem. For the general public, Jazz has become a cult of personality for players instead of focusing on songs.

Many of the Real Book tunes date back to Tin Pan Alley. Back in the day, Jazz players played on popular music. People actually went out to hear the music and the band. Remember the fire-storm Miles caused when he recorded a version of Time After Time? He was just going back to that tradition of playing on tunes that people liked. And yes, there’s been a lot of new music written – but as a genre, the focus is still on the players. Once you put a focus on a player, you cut your audience down to people who like players and other musicians. That’s really problematic if you’re trying to build a career.

No one (outside of musicians playing it or other musicians sitting with crossed arms at a gig critiquing a player hitting the changes) gives a toss about hearing Giant Steps live – they care about the energy the soloist is transmitting. The audience (such as it is) at every jazz gig I’ve been to is about 90% musicians and 10% fans. I’ve mentioned this observation before, but in my undergrad experience I remember going to student recitals and seeing the band mindlessly getting through the head and then breathing a sigh of relief, “Thank God that’s over – now we can play some music!” If you just want to solo with complete disregard for the song – why even maintain the pretense of playing the tune?

Mind you, the issue of repertoire is an over simplification. I don’t want to discount that a lot of great music has been written. While I think that is where Duke and Mingus got it right in keeping the focus on some great pieces, I don’t see any contemporary Jazz composer’s gaining traction in the same way they did. There are a number of reasons for this (including saturation of the music market), but rock music survives because people sing along with the songs and dig the rock star. As a genre, focusing on the Jazz star is a hole that will take a long time to get out of.

“Stop collaborate and listen”

The next problem with Jazz (as indicated by the gig listing above), is the implication that Jazz is background music. Any type of music is no longer music if no one is listening – and Jazz is a music that demands the listener’s attention to pick up on the nuances of the performance. People go to a restaurant to eat, not to listen to the (unpaid) band. Or fans of the band go to the restaurant to hear the musicians play and begrudgingly order food and the 2-drink minimum. So other than people the band has brought (in reality – the only reason restaurants book music anymore) – the other patrons there aren’t listening. Some bands fight this by playing louder and then the patrons just eat and leave.

Musicians take these gigs (and wedding gigs) because they need cash, but as a culture we have moved into an ADD mindset with regard to focus. People are less likely to sit down with a record and dig though it and try to get something out of it. They listen to 5 seconds of an mp3 stream and then move onto the next thing.

Music and players are everywhere

As I mentioned before, the saturated music market is one of the biggest obstacles that challenges Jazz as a genre. There are a lot of players with less and less venues to play in. So you get musicians taking unpaid gigs at a restaurant and wondering why they haven’t sold any cds (and why management wouldn’t comp the food now that the sets are done).

There’s value in scarcity and people have infinite access to music. If you wanted to hear Miles Davis electric band play back in the day, you went to go see them. Now you go to You Tube. There’s increasingly fewer reasons for people to go out and see a show for the sake of seeing a show. In general, they won’t go just because a band is playing and it’s something to do.

“…Those were the days…”

Derek Bailey has one of my favorite quotes ever about the conservatory experience. (I’m paraphrasing here), “As soon as bebop became a set series of formulas taught in an academic setting it went from being the vibrant searching music that it was and became a maudlin reminder of the good old days”.

Many people associate Jazz with comfort (like sitting next to a fire with a glass of wine and listening to Sketches of Spain). They have a nostalgic view about going to a bistro and hearing some jazz. (Some of these people will also tell you that the LOVE Michael Bublé as evidence of a “Jazz” pedigree!?! This is another problem where people have equated intrumentation and arrangement with a genre.) Comfort is a tough market to cultivate and maintain, but Jazz has also been equated with cultured music and as some people go see Jazz in the way that they go to a museum, this could be a key.

People want to be moved.

They want to center. They want to focus.

People go to a museum to experience something. They go to a show because they don’t want to miss an event. As an audience, people are searching for something new.

That sounds like Jazz to me. Ellinger is right. In terms of output – Jazz IS thriving. But its musicians (by and large) are not and if the musicians and composers aren’t thriving – then the genre is in real trouble.

As a genre, I think Jazz needs a re-branding.

Many Jazz musicians are already doing this. They don’t call their music Jazz anymore. They come up with a million other labels and get new audiences in by playing venues guised as something other than Jazz – but playing Jazz at its core. Playing “searching vibrant” music that moves people.

Appealing to people’s mind as cultured music is a good start. Appealing to people as head boppin’ – ass twitchin’ music that grabs the ear and moves the soul is even better.

As a label, Jazz is too broad to be meaningful to most players – but to the public that label already has associations with it. As a genre, Jazz needs to bring new fans into the fold with songs and then wow them with the musicianship behind them.

And it needs to happen, because it’s too beautiful a thing to let slip away.

This excerpt is taken from Selling It Versus Selling Out (Applying Lessons From The Business Of Music) which is available as a Kindle title here.

If you like this essay, you may also like, An Indie Musician Wake Up Call also available on Amazon here.

2013: How Not To Repeat The Mistakes Of The Past (Or Nothing Ever Got Done With An Excuse)

Posted on December 28, 2012 by GuitArchitecture

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

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 2012 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,

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

As 2012 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 2012 and the coming 2013. And in some ways they have a valid point. Listening to their circumstances, 2012 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 2013. There’s a reason for this:

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

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.

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.

“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.”

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.

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.

2012 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 2013 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 2012 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.“

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.

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, then, is not a temporary compromise to a current observation but is instead a revolt against habitual modes of thinking and operation.

Positive habits

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

“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”

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

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!

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.

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

In a final 2012 observation, I’d like to thank everyone who took a moment to come here and read what I was doing. So thank you all again and I hope that 2013 is your best year yet.

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Interview With ZT Amp’s Ken Kantor Now Up on Guitar-Muse

Posted on December 5, 2012 by GuitArchitecture

Hello everyone!

This is just a short update of some recent going ons that may be of interest to you.

Guitar-Muse

I have some new articles up on Guitar-Muse and some more on the way:

Today’s article is an interview I did with Ken Kantor (ZT Amps). (You can read it here). Ken really knocked me out with his ability to take complex ideas and articulate them in an accessible way.
Part 4 of the “Evolution of a live rig” series
Player Profile / Lesson on Ridgely Snow
Player Profile / Lesson on Vlatko Stefanovski
Player Profile / Lesson on José Peixoto
Interview with bassist/Magic Band guitarist/Jack of all Jacks Eric Klerks
reviews, interviews and other lessons in the pipeline.

Mu-sick

Rough Hewn Trio is supposed to get mixed before the end of the year, and I just haven’t found a studio I dig/can afford to track the acoustic ep (but I will and it’ll be cool)!

12 What?

Oh man oh man – the 12 Tone Pattern Improv book is kicking my ass, but this edition is going to be really cool. Look for a lot of guitar-specific applications and some cool ideas.

In other words, a long series of days and nights ahead….hopefully with some good things to show for it.

As always, thanks for reading!

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New Jason Becker Post And A Lesson In Adaptation

Posted on November 28, 2012 by GuitArchitecture

Hello everyone!

I’ve been working on a number of things (and dealing with some substantive setbacks), but I wanted to take a moment and post a lesson as I haven’t had one of those up in a while.

Jason Becker Documentary is now available!

Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet, is a fantastic new documentary that’s made the rounds through the festival circuit and is now available for purchase for a download from Alive Mind Media. If you play guitar, have ever faced adversity or want/need to see an incredibly inspiring story, I can’t recommend the documentary enough.

[vimeo: 39405460]

I’ve just written an article about the new movie (with a lesson/analysis of one of Jason’s compositions in the film) for Guitar-Muse that can be read here on the website.

As a companion piece to that article, I’ve got a short lick below that works on some techniques that I have outlined here, but offers something challenging at the same time.

A lesson in adaptation

One question I get asked a lot is a variation of, “How do I get past just copying people and doing my own thing?” and the answer that I’d give to that is try the two A’s (Analysis and Adaptation).

Analysis: Look at what the player is doing. Usually this breaks down into a something centered on a specific technical or harmonic approach.

Adaptation: Take that approach and adapt it to what you’re already working on.

“Now paging Mr. Becker”

While the speed and precision of his playing is probably the first thing to hit you, Jason Becker has a lot of stylistic elements to his playing as well. These include:

Melodic sequences
Multi-octave arpeggios
Use of non-western melodic material
Bending notes “outside” the scale into pitches in the scale he’s using
Legato playing mixed in with picking

For those of you who have been following what I do, I’ve been teaching a number of techniques involved sweeping scales and arpeggios. As I watched Jason’s documentary, with a guitar on my lap I improvised this idea over one of the big drones he used to solo over.

The Lick

(Click on the graphic to see it full sized)

And here’s the mp3:

This isn’t something that Jason would probably play, but I’ve taken some ideas from him (arpeggios, sequencing ideas and bending notes outside of the scale) and combined them into a single lick.

From a technical standpoint, getting the hammer-ons really clean and in the pocket rhythmically will probably take some practice. I’ve mentioned before that I’m not a huge fan of exercises per se, but I like developing skills by working on things that I’d actually play. With that in mind, this is a great lick for developing a number of things such as:

Rhythm. The line is played as sextuplets in groups of 7, 6 and 5. Notice how the first note of each ascending line falls just off the downbeat which makes the phrasing a little more unpredictable initially.)

Legato playing (and hammer-on strength with the pinky in particular. Articulating the F# s on the G string will likely take some practice).

Sweep picking (It’s deceptive, but the lick has a lot of small 2-3 string sweeps tucked into it. The combination of hammer-ons and sweeps gives it a lot of its sound.)

Sequencing arpeggios. Notice that the lick basically uses one arpeggio (an E major 9) that is played from the root, fifth and the 9th on the A, D and G strings respectively.

Bending. In my mind, the two most Beckerish elements are the two bends at the end, the F natural bending into the F# and the final bend in and out of the D#.

Put it all together and what have you got?

A lick that sounds like me, but based on ideas from another player.

Try this idea in your own playing by taking things you like from other players and adapting them to your style! You might find yourself seeing things in a whole new way.

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

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Let’s Stop Blaming File Sharing And Start Building B(r)and Loyalty

Posted on November 10, 2012 by GuitArchitecture

A good friend of mine (producer, mixer, engineer and man about town Will Kennedy) was kind enough to hip me to an Atlantic Wire post that concerned Chan Marshall from Cat Power declaring bankruptcy and not being able to mobilize funds to tour. The article went on to state:

“Everyone knows that artists go out on a financial limb by committing to creativity as a career. But it’s beginning to look like even the most successful musicians—the ones that grace magazine covers and inspire bloggers to gush out 2,000-word think-pieces—soon won’t be able to eke out a living from their craft.”

As a possibly relevant aside, the article also speculates that recent trips to Mt. Sanai (including one in 2006 for alcohol addiction), and possible complications from angioedema might also play into monetary woes faced by Ms. Marshall.

Will posted this piece on Facebook and talked about how people should consider this story when they think that file sharing doesn’t affect artists.

And he’s right. Filesharing is a problem.

But in my opinion, Will’s comment is what really got down to the core issue. File sharing is only part of the problem. The much bigger issue at play concerns people’s perception of file sharing and what they’re willing to pay for.

“NRA quotes? Really?”

The NRA has an awful slogan/ bumper sticker of, “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” To which I would say that people can kill other people but they can do it more easily (and be more cavalier in the initial act) with a gun – so both people and guns kill people. I’ve seen several heated arguments escalate to the point where if someone had a gun, they would have used it. It would have been regretted a second or two later, but where a fist fight generally goes a couple of punches before someone’s body says, “Ugh this hurts. I don’t want to do this anymore.”, a gun in the hand of an inexperienced user provides a distanced violent immediacy that removes that moment of analysis/realization. People pull the trigger first and then deal with the consequences later.

Building on this metaphor, if filesharing is the gun that everyone worries about then apathetic consumers are the ones who pull the trigger in a cavalier way not knowing or caring how it affects the people who made the thing they’re using.

And make no mistake about it, the consequences for musicians trying to support themselves through music are economically violent. Consider this for a moment, despite the fact that more musicians than ever are playing and recording music and releasing it on their own labels, the number of musicians I know who support themselves through music in any capacity decreases every year.

“Money for Nothing and chicks for free”

The most interesting thing about the post for me were the comments after the story. I was surprised by the number of informed musicians (and people close to musicians) who brought up a number of interesting points like this:

“Speaking from personal experience, you do not go into the indie music business without an entrepreneurial attitude. Being in a band these days is no different than running a start-up technology company… you have to be agile, you have to produce, you have to capitalize on every opportunity and revenue stream. If you think otherwise, your endeavor will fail. I get a lot of flack for saying “entrepreneurs thrive, artists starve”… but it is true and I will continue to repeat it as a mantra to every young band that I council.”

However, as artists we need to recognize that many people still view the arts like this:

“”I have a job where I get paid by the hour. Guarantee that I have made less in the last 10 years than she did last year alone. Boo Hoo. You are more than likely correct in your statement that she just can’t manage her money. Or entrusted her finances to someone who was a leach. either way, no sympathies.”

.

I remember the first time I came home from college and people would say things to me like, “Oh music. It must be nice to sit around and just strum your guitar all day. I actually had to work in my classes.” If you’ve ever been to a college level aural skills/ ear training class you know how much work goes into getting through that material.

But the public perception is that musician’s don’t work. They party hard, sleep late and play some music in between. The public perception is that musicians lead a charmed life where the cash just rolls in for doing nothing.

Changing public perception and opinion…

As artists we need to stop blaming file sharing for all of our economic woes because people don’t care about how it affects artists.

We need to build brand loyalty (or in many of our cases BAND loyalty). If consumers have no emotional connection to artists or services, they’re not going to pay for them. Or they’re going to use services like Spotify and think that they’re supporting artists in some way even though the actual payments to artists are more symbolic than anything.

As artists, we’re going to have to start subversively educating the public about how much work goes into what we do. The whole, “I work really hard to not make any money.” blanket statement hasn’t gotten us anywhere, so we need to change tactics and connect with people to garner support.

When the general public hears that musician’s can’t support themselves they say, “Awww….little Jimmy guitar is going to have to work for a living now.”

But many of those same people would also say, “Oh my son Jesse! He went to school for anthropology. $60,000 in debt and he can’t get a job. It’s awful to spend so much money studying something and work so hard and not be able to support yourself doing it….”

While personal contact provides the deepest connection, it may make sense to work large and then small.

…one episode at a time

Perhaps what we need is something like a reality show.

That is, IF the show were a gritty reality show with creative involvement by working musicians that followed a struggling band (with likable and preferably good looking musicians) trying to make it, and showed how much work goes into gigging and how little it pays. There have been several “get in the van” -style documentaries like this – but I think a weekly show (more intervention and less American Idle) could be the type of thing that could do it.

You think it’s a bad idea? Sharon Osbourne was quietly managing dozens of bands before the Ozzy reality show. Now she’s an actual celebrity and their children Jack and Kelly have also parlayed the jumpstart of public awareness of them into actual careers. Reality shows give a temporary boost in public profile to individuals, but I think the format could be subverted that in a way that it showcased and act AND acted as a platform for larger issues.

In terms of demographics it should probably be a country band in a large city like New York or a big theatrical band like GWAR, Watching people (an audience likes) sleep in vans and postering for shows all day to play a gig and make little or no money is a struggle that an audience could identify with.

I’m being a little glib about this – but the point is that as musicians we need to start a process of getting the public to identify with what we do and we need to do it it a subtle, if not entirely subversive, way.

Why do people buy girl scout cookies?

Because they like cookies.

But they also buy Girl Scout Cookies as opposed to any store bought cookies because they’re supporting the people behind the cookies.

It’s not just you

And to clarify, the problem of supporting yourself through your work isn’t just for indie artists. Classical music can’t figure it out either. Large symphonies can’t put on a show without massive corporate underwriting and they still need to charge $60-$120 per ticket. Museums need funding and underwriting. Clubs make their money on the two-drink minimum or the meals served.

Two types of musicians

There’s a huge generation gap in the music industry. Older musicians are, by and large, horse and buggy users. Wet eyed and maudlin about the good old days, they all own cars but can’t understand why no one wants to pay to ride on their buggy when it’s such a good buggy and people always used to want to ride it.

Many of the current crop of musicians are used to not making money. They expect that they’re going to have to make money from other things.

The entrepreneurs on both sides of those fences work on things that make money. They keep expenses down and watch money. They diversify streams of revenue. They don’t count on one thing and the successful ones work harder than most 9-5ers.

Again with the Kindle book Plug?

I’ve talked a lot about this in both of my Kindle books (An Indie Musician Wake Up Call and Selling It Versus Selling Out), but the issue is that, as musicians, we haven’t built brand loyalty. And, economically we offer a silly product.

I’m not overly fond of the comparison between paying for coffee and paying for music (even though I’ve used it myself) but the difference between the two is telling.

When you buy a coffee you make a decision about the place selling the coffee. If you like the coffee and you perceive it to be a good value, when you want a coffee you might be more inclined to go with the known quantity and buy one at the place you got it before (if it’s convenient for you to do so).

Musicians sell mp3 of their music but when you buy the mp3 you never have to buy that mp3 again. It’s like a bottomless cup of coffee you can enjoy at home. Additionally, instead of people coming back to get coffee from us when they want one, musicians only get another sale if we offer a different coffee that apeals to someone. People buy your cd and they’ll only buy another one from you when you have another one out.

Find the fan and turn (him or her) on

This is where fans come in. Fans get things (mp3s, videos, etc) from wherever they can because they want them now, but they buy things from you, because they want to turn other people onto it. For about 3 years, every time I’d find the Mimi cd (Mimi Goese solo record on Luaka Bop) in a record store (remember those?), I’d buy it and give it to a friend of mine.

Fans spread the word and even when they can get them for free, they’ll buy things from you because they feel connected to you.

So, as artists we have two choices

a.) we can find new ways to reach people, educate people to garner sympathy and support, build connections and develop a fan base to support what we do

b.) we can blame file sharing for why no one has any money and talk about how great it was back in the day.

We can either start defining the future or be defined by it. Which do you want to do?

As always, thanks for reading!

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ps – As I mentioned before, much of this is addressed (in much more depth) between my two Kindle books, (An Indie Musician Wake Up Call and Selling It Versus Selling Out). If you don’t own a Kindle, the kindle app to read it on your phone, tablet or computer is free from Amazon.

And if you already have a copy of either book and could take a moment to write short review on Amazon, I’d be truly grateful.

Analysis Of A Film Score

Posted on October 29, 2012 by GuitArchitecture

Recently, Gary Mairs, a filmmaker and faculty member at CalArts, asked me to create a score for a screening of Teinosuke Kinugasa’s landmark silent film, Kurutta Ippēji (aka, Page of Madness” aka “A Page out of order”) in his Film History Class.

Accompanying silent films was a gig I had for several years at the school and enjoyed it so much that I started doing live scoring in other venues as well. Gary’s class gave me the opportunity to create scores (with artists such as Carmina Escobar and the Rough Hewn Trio’s Craig Bunch and Chris Lavender) for many films including The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Broken Blossoms, The Smiling Madame Beaudet, Faust and Phantom of The Opera.

The experience with Carmina Escobar was so successful that when the opportunity arose to create a live score as part of the Cha’ak’ab Paaxil Festival in Mérida, Mexico ( and present a workshop on “Structured Improvisation in Film Accompaniment” at the Edificio de Artes Visuales – Escuela Superior de Artes de Yucatán) I took it immediately.

Of all the films I’ve accompanied though, Page of Madness holds a special place in my heart. The initial score that Carmina and I improvised for Gary’s class was a moment that resonated strongly with everyone in the room and I knew immediately that it was something that I wanted to add to my live repertoire. When I moved to NY, I knew I wouldn’t be able to accompany Gary’s class live anymore but having the opportunity to do this was a way for me to create some kind of document of that time so I gladly took it on.

The process I used to improvise for film (and how I teach other people to do improvise in that manner) is too long to go into here so for now I’ll discuss some technical and non-technical aspects of how I approached the film.

The Film

Originally released in 1926, Page of Madness was assumed lost for decades until the director found in a rice tin in 1971. He added a score (that I liked a great deal by the way) and cut about 1/3 of the original film and any known prints are based around the 1971 version. In terms of the cuts effect on the story, I don’t know if the original cut’s pacing was more linear, but I suspect it wasn’t.

As the acting in early silent films was rooted in theatrical acting (with actors making large gesticulations and exaggerated characterizations to play to the people in the back of the room), many silent films haven’t aged particularly well. In that regard, one remarkable thing to me about this film is how well it has held up over time. The entire action of the film takes place in and around a mental institution and the energy all the actors put into the characterizations works exceptionally well.

Avante-garde doesn’t even begin to describe this film which (like Murnau’s The last Laugh) uses no title cards and takes place solely in and on the grounds of an institution. In addition to some jarring visual superimpositions, Page also features a story line that uses a series of flash backs and non-linear narratives that complicate the story. The end result is a film that is nostalgic on one hand and surprisingly contemporary on the other.

For those of you who are interested, I’ve uploaded about 30 minutes of the Quicktime film and the score to discuss what, why and how I did what I did.

Technical Notes:

I used Logic for this project. Here’s a screenshot of the session.

You might notice a distinct lack of midi in the score. The majority of work I did was created with audio and samples rather than midi and I’ll try to explain differences in the video breakdown.

Here’s the film:

(If the link isn’t showing above in your browser – you can also see it here.)

Decisions, Decisions

Right off the bat, let me say I approached this completely differently than I would have approached scoring a traditional film.

If I got a gig creating cues for a video or a theatrical release, I would tailor the sounds and experience to audio locked into a film print. As this score would be used to accompany a silent film in a film history class, my goal was to create a score that would simulate a live experience of someone accompanying the film but I also wanted to add foley and FX to create a depth of experience outside of merely adding music.

Working with Limitations

My original scoring idea was to accompany the film with a multitracked session of my recorded voice using extended techniques like overtone singing. While I think it would have been really effective the lack of an isolated recording environment to record that cleanly nixed that idea ultimately.

After I had put a series of sound effects in, I remembered that I had a source recording of Carmina and I accompanying the same film at another venue and I realized that this might be the best way to tie in the loose live performance feel I was going for with the more orchestrated foley I employed. The source audio of the live recording was fairly clean overall except for some places where the bass frequencies were distorting. If you look at the track labelled “duodenum”, you’ll see some edits I made to either create space or deal with the frequency issue (I basically moved the offending audio to another track and processed it into something useable).

I used a Quicktime film in Logic to score to and exported the audio. I sent Gary AIF, mp3 files and the Quicktime film so he could see how I imagined the synchronization, but I needed to leave the score open enough that even if the synch fell off that the score would still make sense. Again, for a theatrical release I would have used Midi and SMPTE to have everything synch perfectly but given that this is going to be an audio file that plays through the sound system while an actual film is screening through a film projector I decided to try to synch up a few things and leave the rest of it open.

Before I added any music, I spent a LOT of time on foley. I pulled a number of samples from Free Sound dot org, and then spent countless hours cutting things up in Fission (A great 2-track editor from the makers of Audio Hijack Pro) and then further mutating them with endless plug ins in Logic.

Cue Notes:

Okay, here are some notes from the session from the video.

00:00 – 00:42 – Synch points and establishing tone

I synched up some audio of a man counting backwards from 1-10 in Japanese with the pre-roll to help Gary synch the audio for the class. I decided to use a temple bell sound to help set the mood and synched that to the page turns.

00:46 – 02:09 – Silence

I wasn’t sure if this would actually be a part of the screening. In a traditional accompaniment, you’d typically hear some organist pull an old-time radio drama score over any type of credits or title cards. To me, it’s emotionally not part of the actual film so I left it blank. It also helps people focus on the story.

02:10 – 03:05 – Title sequence

The bell motive returned here. I added in some Noh Drama type percussion but used a sparse rhythmic motive. In the background some reverse guitar loops begin.

Again, most of the initial work done was on foley and placement. Once I added in the music track the score was largely a matter of balancing the mix and placement of what I had already done. I took out about 25% of the foley work I’d done to make space for the score.

03:07 – 04:02 – Rain

I decided to treat rain almost as a character in this film. I saw it (and still see it) as the truth and realization that the husband doesn’t want to face through the whole film. It’s a psychological foreboding of what’s he’s been avoiding and ultimately acceptance of how things are. Multiple rain loops are employed in the beginning of the film but a single rain loop I created runs in the background of the whole film and continues past the last scene before it cuts to the last image when the sound fades to silence. It’s a subtle detail but one that adds something to the environment.

04:03 – 05:06 – Dream state and Transition.

Detailing the nuances of the actual improvisation process we utilized is something that would be worthy of a much longer discussion but I feel that I should discuss at least one aspect of the structured improvisation Carmina and I utilized. By structured improvisation, I mean that we worked out cues in the film of things that we were aiming for but what would happen before and after those points were an improvised path to reach an emotional moment at those cues and the actual cue itself might not be specific. It might be something like, “When we get to the first fight – lets create a dense loop texture.” or it might be a specific melody or rhythmic device. For this scene we wanted something dreamlike and other worldly so I went with a repeating figure while Carmina sang long tones over it.

Percussion was added to the loop to act as a foreshadowing of the dancing sequence to follow.

05:07 – 05:06 – Reality and Creating the Asylum

The gate door closing was part of a transition to bring the viewer back to our reality and show that this is how the inmate views the world. There were a number of samples that all run during any of the asylum scenes to help set a claustrophobic tone of the institution. After the introduction, the outdoor scenes were the only time the asylum samples weren’t played.

Minor percussion and storm effects were added to Carmina’s loops to help build tension.

At 06:37, I stopped the percussion to highlight the fact that what this woman heard is outside the rhythm of the institution and is an internal force that she is compelled to interact with. I think Carmina’s voices do a brilliant job of conveying that idea of multiple voices fighting for attention.

At 07:27 or so, exhaustion gives way to the sounds around the dancer and reality starts to envelop her again. Carmina sang a variation of the earlier melody as a motif. In the performance, I still had a loop I faded out on guitar and the low drum sound was created by me hitting a road case in the reverberation of the theater space.

At 08:01 or so – I began to add in a series of samples of heavily affected backwards speaking to represent the voices the wife hears. I use this sound as the general sound of insanity in the asylum, so it comes to the foreground when the wife is on screen but stays back most of the time as another part of the environment.

08:15 – The Husband Enters.
All of the characters had a theme except for the husband. I wanted to have the husband be a character that is adrift in this world around him. I thought it would create a silence to contrast all of the other sounds against.

I tried to remain very aware of the spaces in the film. Even though there aren’t any spaces of complete silence (until the end) I wanted to have sparse moments to contrast the rest of the film against.

11:49 – Flashback

We sidestep the asylum briefly to see how the wife got to where she is today. Musically, I kept things open except for the mob scenes. I began to build a loop texture on guitar. The melodies and counterpoint are based around some Hirajoshi-inspired ideas. I wanted to make sure that the percussion and melodic material I was providing has small hints of music inspired by traditional Japanese music while applying those ideas in a very western way. The end result is something sonically that’s difficult to put your finger on.

19:31 – The build up

There are two fight sequences that Carmina and I knew that we wanted to make big sonically. In the scenes leading up to this, I slowly began to make the loops more active and dense to show the tension underneath the surface of the Doctor’s routine walkthrough. At 19:31 the textures start evolving in a different direction and slowly moving to the disturbance at 24:59 that leads to the full on freak out at 27:30 or so. After that we bring it down and create another plateau to build from again later in the film.

Ending notes:

The process was really pretty simple. It involved creating an environment and then removing absolutely everything that didn’t have to be there. I should also mention that had Carmina and I tried to play really tight specific cues to the original film that flying in a full performance never would have worked. The conversation that the two of us had during the film was something that would have been impossible to replicate completely and aesthetically, I really liked the idea of the music just being a part of a stream that flows along with the film.

Have a plan B

One last thing I should mention is that the process of actually creating the stereo file and synched video was no picnic.

For some reason, the Audio bounce in logic failed every time I tried it. It would run for 7-8 hours and I’d have to force quit the file.

What I decided to do instead was use the aforementioned Audio Hijack Pro, to record the playback output of the logic file. Once I had a stereo file. I edited it in fusion to start at the 3 count lead in and imported the audio and video in iMovie and synched the hits there and output the Quicktime film. I would have been REALLY stuck without Audio Hijack Pro, so I’m grateful that (3 days and 4 real time bounce attempts later) that I came up with that workaround.

All in, there’s about 40-50 hours of work in it.

There’s a few different things going on sonically in the second half, but this post explains a lot of the reasons behind what I did what I did, and perhaps that’s helpful, insightful or just interesting to some of you.

If people are interested, I’ll post the second half at some point and offer some more observations on what was done and why.

Until next time. From the earlobe of Hurricane Sandy – stay dry (and thanks for reading)!

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p.s. For the tech oriented amongst you. Guitar sounds were FnH UltraSonic–> Digitech Space Station–>Apogee Duet–>macbook Pro->AuLab–>Pod farm–> Sooperlooper (Both controlled by a Line 6 Mark II pedal board) –>Atomic Reactor amp.

Notes From A Lecture

Posted on October 20, 2012 by GuitArchitecture

“What’s with all these words and where’s the shred stuff?”

I know I’ve been veering away form strictly guitar stuff lately on this blog. (Don’t worry though, the pure guitar thing is never too far away. A number of new (strictly guitar related) posts have made their way to Guitar-Muse and there’s some new material that will be released either in Kindle or e-book format.) A large part of the shift in content here is due to a move from focusing on working through the how (how do you play modes on guitar) and shifting the focus more to the why (i.e. my philosophy). I’ve talked about this before but without a strong sense of why you do what you do, progressing and improving in the long term will fall apart as you face the numerous challenges and obstacles that you’ll be faced with on the long haul.

As someone who plays and teaches, I’m often asked, “How long does it take to learn to play guitar?” It’s a surprisingly easy question to answer. It depends on what you want to do on the instrument. If you want to learn to play a few chords to serenade someone on a tune you can get some basic chord forms and strum patterns down in as little as a few weeks.

If you want to really say something unique to you on the instrument, it will take years or decades of hard work and those before you who have already been on the path for decades will tell you that they’re still working on defining and articulating what they say on the instrument. This leads directly into my first point.

.

The heretic’s statement

While I love the guitar dearly, it’s just a tool of expression.

Guitar playing is only a reflection of who I am at the time I’m playing. It’s a sonic documentary. It’s a voice that I control with my fingers.

I need a pen to write ideas down on a piece of paper, but ultimately the ideas behind the writing are a lot more important than some scribbles on a page.

It’s a symbiotic relationship. As I play guitar, I develop as a person as well. As a person I take a number of influences that inspire me (like literature, film and other people’s music) and use those as spring boards for expression.

While I work at being a better guitarist, I’m also working at being a better person and vice-versa.

To me – it’s all guitar playing.

The How and Albert Ellis

For those of you unfamiliar with the man, Albert Ellis is not some brilliant up and coming underground shredder that will show you how to stuff 15 notes in a 5 note bag. Mr. Ellis was a particularly brilliant psychologist who had taken some cues from Stoicism, and Levi-Strauss and created a new form of therapy known as REBT (Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy). I had first discovered Ellis’ work in college and while I found his books to be somewhat bizarre in their tone (the writing style seemed to be mired in the 1950’s with references to things like “Pollyannaish thinking”) his approach of using rational thought to break people out of emotional traps they had fallen into was particularly insightful to me and spoke to my own approach to removing emotions from problems and tackling them for what they are.

In the 1990’s I saw that an Adult Education division was going to bring Albert Ellis to speak at the lecture. To say that Ellis was a brusque man is stating it mildly. Throughout the lecture he swore like a sailor, called b-s on any number of things and took anonymous audience questions about problems they were having on stage and then talked through how to approach the problem.

When the lecture was over. People were congregating around to talk to him and he yelled “Excuse me” and “Get out of my way” as he bolted out the door and went to his car. I believe his logic was, he was paid to speak for two hours, people could ask him whatever they wanted during that time and he wasn’t going to hang out for another hour or two afterwards. The audience hated this but I saw it as a man who practiced what he preached. (If you read below, you’ll see that this wasn’t solely about the money – The Ellis Institutecontinues to offer the Friday Night public workshop that Ellis discusses below for the inflation adjusted price of $15 per person. It’s about not getting entangled in things you don’t wish to).

I made a number of notes at the lecture and I’ve posted them below. In terms of content, its a little rough and tumble and should act as little more than a “Cliff notes” version of his approach – but you might find it to be an interesting overview in how to remove emotions from problems and attack them in a systematic process.

If you find feelings of anger, depression or inadequacy acting as obstacles in your practicing, playing or goals, you might find Ellis’ approach helpful. I’ll include any new notes in brackets [ ].

Notes on an Albert Ellis lecture in Boston. December 8, 1994.

Albert Ellis, Ph.D. is the head of the Institute for Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET). [Ellis used the terms RET and REBT in the lecture interchangeably] He conducts interviews every Friday night at the Institute for $5.

Ellis’ methodology is borne out of a philosophical tradition rather than a psychological one. Of primary influence to his methodology were the Greeks and their focus on the analytical.

You are a talented screwball.

The RET observations:

1. All people want to be loved and accepted.

2. People meet conflicts with this goal. The experience rejection/frustration /disappointment.

3. People refuse to change

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Three causes for Neurosis

1. EGO – I am the center fo the universe

2. Anger / Rage

3. A perception that there has to be environmental control.

#2 and #3 –> refusal to accept (rationalize)

The two words that cure all neurosis?: Tough shit.

Past events are not the causes for present conditions.

Humans are born with two tendencies

1. Posessing goals, values, desires, etc and demanding what you want. Ellis seems to view people generally as babies where immediate needs are the primary focus. That egocentricity makes people very upsettable.

2. People have a constructive self-actualizing tendency. You are born to think.

The net effect of these two statements is that while you can disturb yourself, you can also undisturb yourself.

You balance the rational and the unrational. The Universe is ambivalent.

Three Insights of RET

1. No one (or nothing) ever upset you. You choose to upset yourself.

2. When it [the depression/anxiety/problematic emotion] started is irrelevant. It lasts because you believe it. You can’t change people or situations – only perception.

3. There is no magic. No one’s going to come down from the sky to save you. There is only work and practice.

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How to change:

Cognitive thinking

1. Dispute the “musts” “I must be this…I must do this.” Why must you? [Ellis refers to this in some of his writing as ‘musterbation”]

2. Along similar lines…”I can’t bear it (rejection, etc)” or “I can’t stand it.” The implication is – “I can’t stand it and be happy at all.”

3. “When I fail, I am worthless” in reality – “I acted badly – but I screwed up and I am human.”

There are two solutions to a poor sense of self-worth

1. I’m okay because I am alive. (I’m okay because I choose to be okay.)

2. I’m neither good or bad as good implies perfection and bad implies damnable [The terms are all or nothings propositions for Ellis]. I am a human who behaves well and when I agree to reach/perform certain moral ethical deeds, I am behaving well but good deeds do not make me good. (preferred method). I am not my acts/behaviours.

Self Esteem is an illness

When I am doing okay, I am okay – otherwise I’m a worm and even when I am okay – I worry about being a worm.

Low self-esteem: Because people don’t love me enough and because I act well I am okay.

High Self-Esteem I’m okay when I’m beautiful.

Self esteem is conditional. The goal is unconditional self-acceptance. Unconditional acceptance must be taught.

Coping methods

Referencing: When you do something compulsively bad – you write down all of the disadvantages of the act and review often.

Rational coping self-statement: Effective view philosophy [Also written – also reviewed often]

“I don’t need – but I would like.”

There is nothing awful – only inconvenient. “Mind you getting slowly tortured to death is inconvenient but it is not a worse case scenario. You could always be tortured more slowly.” [What was implied by Ellis is that you can not be faced with the most awful thing or situation.]

Psycho-educational techniques: Good books, video, etc prosleytize and teach so that you can learn.

Modeling: find good role models

Role Playing: stop at anxious (or appropriate sensation) moments and analyze. What am I thinking right now?

Positive thinking is okay but does have it’s limitations. Its achilles heel is that it can reinforce the “must” syndrome.

If you’re afraid of something. Do it. repeatedly. Rewards afterwards and “punish” if you fall through. [Ellis used a couple of examples here but he said to a woman trying to lose weight, “Okay. You want to loose weight. And you eat cookies all the time so as one step of this, you’re going to stop eating cookies. What do you hate to do in the world more than anything? ‘Call my mother-in-law.’ Okay then. So from now on if you eat a cookie, you’ll have to call your mother-in-law and talk to her. But you really have to do it! It only works if you follow through.” In more extreme cases, Ellis recommends people burn money as a punishment. “After someone burns their second $20 bill, they stop doing what they’re doing pretty quickly”]

You let other people affect you but not disturb you.

Grief vs depression.

Grief is okay.

Grief: I’ve lost something and that is bad

Depression: Isn’t it too bad that I’ve lost something?

Problematic Solutions

When a situation is bad – do not leave when you are upset because you’ll take those emotions with you into every other situation.

1. Analyze how upset you are

2. Act rationally.

The approach seems to have several steps.

1. Problem identification

2. Statement and picturing of the worst thing that could happen.

3. Identifying feelings with that scenario.

4. Changing feelings/perceptions of the worse case scenario used rational coping self statements repeatedly and setting up small reward/punishment systems to work on those statements daily.

This last step implies a lot of time. There is no quick panacea for your problems.

Dr. Ellis has a hard methodology. It makes the individual fully responsible for his/her actions, works within a closed system and puts emphasis on the body’s cognitive powers. He is violently opposed to most forms of therapy which he feels puts too much emphasis on past actions and events and not enough on present responsibility. While he isn’t opposed to all forms of psychotherapy, his motto certainly seems to be, let the buyer beware.

His lecture was filled with cursing. It seems to be a part of his shtick, but one of the things that it did was keep the audience laughing – and laughter (along with responsibility, work and perception) seems to be a very important part of the RET methodology.

*Those are all the notes I had from the lecture.

I hope you found this interesting, insightful, or helpful in some way and, as always, thanks for reading.

-SC