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!

-SC

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!

-SC

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)!

-SC

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

.

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.

.

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

On Education: Learning And Knowing

Posted on October 4, 2012 by GuitArchitecture

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

-SC

All Opinions Are Not Equal

Posted on September 14, 2012 by GuitArchitecture

[Edit: To clarify; as of this writing, there is a substantive amount of press being generated by Amanda Palmer’s decision to solicit local volunteer musicians to accompany her live shows for free (as in beer, merch and good vibes). Having read Ms. Palmer’s reply, I have reconsidered some of my earlier comments and updated them below.]

Well… I might as well get this out of the way.

I think the whole Amanda Palmer trip about not paying musicians who play with her is silly.

There’s also no real story here.

Hiring a regional back up band is nothing new. Chuck Berry did it for most of his carer, and I understand that Robert from Williard Grant Conspiracy did it as well. Though they (and other people I’ve heard of who hired regional back up bands as well) actually paid those players money.

Getting people to play for free is nothing new. Promoter’s and labels who don’t want to spend money have been doing it to professional and amateur musicians forever.

(The irony of an independent musician (who was formerly on a big label) that made a big stink about labels taking advantage of artists, then turning around and doing the same to other artists is not lost on me however.)

Again, there’s really no news here.

Musicians that weren’t going to see her before, still aren’t going.

Fans that love her continue to love her.

Players (and non-players) who think it would be awesome to get up on stage with Amanda will do so.

I had different views about this when I posted it initially, but outside of the rancor this has raised, it’s just a decision that will become a vehicle that promotes Amanda Palmer by getting people to talk about her. (By the way, I do have a much more in-depth essay about this in my new book, Selling It Versus Selling Out – it’s worth checking out if you haven’t done so already!)

What I do find to be incredibly eye-opening, is the number of forum posts from non-musicians who all have strong opinions about musicians who want to get paid, and asking why those musicians are being so uptight, entitled and/or needy. Or posts from people who don’t play an instrument and don’t make any kind of art, who somehow have a lot of say about art, and those trying to make a living doing it.

For the record, all opinions are not equal.

The internet will give you the impression that they are, but they aren’t.

There are basically informed opinions, wrongly informed opinions and uninformed opinions and while everyone is entitled to their own opinion, they do not (and should not) equate in terms of validity.

.

Informed vs Uninformed Opinions

Let’s say I’m hiking with my friends and we come across a snake. One of my friends, who knows nothing at all about snakes and is more than a little immature, says to me that it would make a great gag to pick up the harmless small snake crawling near us off the ground and throw it at someone. At the same time, another one of my friends, who happens to be a zoologist, tells me that he recognizes the snake as a highly poisonous one and advises me to stay away from it.

Which opinion do you think I’m going to listen to about handling the snake?

Yes both people are entitled to their opinions, but for me there is more validity in the opinion of the person who knows what the Hell they’re talking about.

.

Wrongly informed opinions

The internet is full of people who dispense data guised as wisdom.

People who have “informed” opinions because they read or heard something somewhere.

Forums are filled with these people. Jokers who fill up pages of forum space talking about the merits and detriments of various products only to find that they don’t own any of them, but are just speculating based on ad copy and product specifications.

Wrongly informed opinions are even more detrimental to making an informed decision, because, like most conspiracy theories, they have at least a grain of truth that their logical architecture is based on. That truth is what typically passes the smell test, “does it smell like bs to you?” and leads to the, “if a is to be and b is to c then a is to z” logic that often comes about from this.

Opinions aren’t facts and shouldn’t be treated the same way.

.

The Lesson Story

I believe that I’ve related this story once before, but I relate it again as I didn’t find it right away and it’s relevant to this idea.

I once had a person respond in a really combative way to a teaching ad I put up on Craigslist.

(BTW – I know CL works like gang busters for some people, but it never worked out for me. I think this is largely because while my lessons are a bargain in terms of what a student can learn, they’re not cheap. And CL guitar lessons seem to be ALL about the cheap.)

Getting back to the story, he demanded to know how much of my time was spent teaching, and whether I was a real full-time musician. I responded to his e-mail as tactfully as I could, addressing my credentials and trying to determine what I wanted to learn. He responded with a lengthy e-mail that included demands for justifying my price because, “I only want to study with the best.” and he needed to figure out if I am “the best”.

Now the “best” anything, in terms of artistic expression, is a term that makes me uncomfortable. I do happen to be the best teacher in the Scott Collins teaching method and style. In that style and method of teaching, you wont find anyone who teaches better than me. Now, am I the best teacher for you? I don’t know. I have been for some students, but I can’t line up 30 people and say, “I’m better than all those people” because I am only the best at what I do and conveying information to people in my manner.

Despite being really put off by his approach, I pushed the topic a bit and asked about his current skill set and what he was trying to do. He explained that he was not a guitarist, but that he was planning on buying a guitar soon. While he didn’t play any other instruments, he was going to play guitar because he had really long fingers and knew that he could play it very well in a short period of time. Hence his need for the best teacher, because he needed someone who would help him unleash the awesome untapped divine talent that had been bestowed to him in his teens.

In other words, I spent 45 minutes writing thoughtful carefully worded responses intended to clarify, but ultimately justifying my skill set to a completely ignorant person who knew nothing about guitar and didn’t even play, but had a LOT of strong opinions about what I did.

.

Save yourself some time and energy.

As musicians, it’s common to get worked up over people’s opinions about what we do.

I’m not saying that all listeners are uninformed. I’ve had people who happened to have listened to a lot of music deeply offer really insightful observations to me about what they liked or didn’t like about various things. They didn’t know jargon, but they knew what they were talking about in terms of conveying their aesthetic.

What I am saying is that if the opinion you’re listening to (or more likely reading) is uninformed, that engaging that opinion is generally a time-suck. You can try to inform the person expressing the opinion, which takes time (and the right person willing to listen to other opinions) or you can walk away.

It’s easy to get entangled into flamed threads or comment sections to contribute an opinion, but if you’re trying to explain to a non-musician why musicians should be compensated. You’re wasting time that’s better spent making a good piece of art to sell to them instead.

Thanks for reading!

-SC

p.s. I’ve mentioned it before, but that Indie Musician Wake Up Call Kindle book is a cheap $1.99 insight into some of the issues covered here ; )

New Jimmy Rosenberg Lesson Up, GM Posts And More Books On The Way

Posted on September 11, 2012 by GuitArchitecture

Hello everyone!

Sometimes life throws you some curve balls. I had planned on getting loads of playing and gigging in and instead, I’m in full throttle writing mode! There are benefits to that though such as:

A new lesson for Guitar-Muse is up online. This player profile covers Jimmy Rosenberg’s solo on the Flintstone’s theme! If you want an ass kicking chops intensive piece in the Gypsy Jazz style to work on (as played by a then 15 year old Jimmy!) check it out here!

In other GM news, player profiles continue with lessons from the works of Ridgely Snow, Vlatko Stefanovski, Jimmy Rosenberg and José Peixoto. The current plan is to alternate these every other week with the Chasing Tone Series. Part three of the series should be up next week (in the meantime you can read part one here or part 2 here). Interviews with Ken Kantor (ZT Amps) and Marco Oppedisano (Mechanical Uprising, The Ominous Corner) and a cd review are also on the docket.

In terms of writing, last week saw some new things of mine drop. There’s a book out on Kindle about the state of the music industry (thanks to everyone who’s gotten behind that and to Jzzmchn for the kind review!) and a Pentatonic Visualization pdf for sale either h ere or on Fiverr. (Thanks for the positive reviews there as well everyone!) New stuff is also on the way. I’m currently editing Nothing Ever Got Done With An Excuse (the time/project management book) and a to be titled book of Music Business Essays. I’m also working on serializing the Pentatonic Book as a short series of Kindle lessons and then expanding beyond that book into some of the material from the GuitArchitect’s Guide To Pentatonics Book notes that I gathered a while ago. The graphic editing along on the initial Pentatonic book is tough slogging to try to make it work on the Kindle, but I think I can do it in a way that will be accessible and look good. The larger GuitArchitecture books will get ported over to Kindle (albeit in a radically altered form) later this fall.

Music. Working on cleaning up tracks on the Rough Hewn Ep, and trying to find the right place to track my acoustic guitar EP. Work is slated to begin in the next 2-3 weeks for a commissioned soundtrack for Page Of Madness (aka A Page out of Order). A track of mine is still supposed to come out on Mandorla at some point this fall and Daren Burns told me that he’s releasing the studio Onibaba recording before the end of the year as well. There should be some other gigs and recording slated over the next few months as well.

I’ll be trying to get some of the “other” posts up on GuitArchitecture as well! I’m aiming for high output before the end of the year! And I hope to see you there.

As always, thanks for reading!
.

-SC

An Indie Musician Wake Up Call Is Now Available on Kindle

Posted on September 8, 2012 by GuitArchitecture

Hello everyone!

My first Kindle book, “An Indie Musician Wake Up Call” is now up on Amazon! (If you have Amazon Prime, you can read it for free!) If you don’t have a Kindle, the Kindle app to read it on your mac/pc/iPad, etc. is free from Amazon. The book description from Amazon is below.

An Indie Musician Wake Up Call (aka What Louis CK, Amanda Palmer, David Lowery and Emily White Really Means For The Working Musician ) is a prog rock manifesto delivered as a punk rock intervention.

The book is comprised of two extended (but related) essays that address the real impact that Amanda Palmer’s recent Kickstarter campaign and Louis CK’s crowdfunding release has on working musicians (hint: not much), and the REAL problem musicians face with the David Lowery/Emily White NR debacle (hint – it’s not strictly file sharing).

“An Indie Musician Wake Up Call” is a rallying cry for real steps musicians will need to take in the 21st century to move forward and establish their careers.

Wait…”first kindle book”?

In related news, there will be a book of music business essays up on Kindle soon, as well as Nothing Ever Got Done With An Excuse, the book on project management I’m currently editing.

Additionally, the current book on Fiverr (http://fiverr.com/guitarchitect/teach-you-how-to-visualize-the-pentatonic-scale-all-over-the-guitar-fingerboard),

will be serialized and expanded on in a series of Kindle guitar lessons.

Kindle and GuitArchitecture Books

For those of you who have asked about the GuitArchitecture reference books getting moved over to Kindle, I should talk about the Kindle platform, porting the reference books and other materials over to that medium.

When I saw that the Kindle was the number one selling item on all of Amazon earlier in the year, I knew that I could reach a lot of people by moving my content there.

Files for the Kindle reader work on a proprietary format called .mobi. Amazon has a converter that will work with a variety of formats (including .doc), but I’ve had better success with the final version looking like what I actually output in my exporting files as HTM (or HTML).

The first problem with the Kindle option for the GuitArchitecture books is that while Kindles can read pdfs, Amazon won’t sell pdfs on their store. From a marketing point, Amazon’s store front is the biggest reason to move the books over so that plan of action won’t work for me.

The death knell, however, of porting the books over in their current form is that I would go broke doing so.

First, full disclosure. If you go to sell Kindle titles on Amazon, there are two revenue options for the author (depending on the pricing of the book). You can sell with a 70% rate of return or with a 30% rate of return. Now your initial response to that might be, “Well of course! Take the 70%!” – but hold it right there partner! If you take 70% option, you also pay the transmission costs for the book to people’s kindle.

The reason for this is that Amazon has a server that holds and sends those titles. With the 30% rate of return, they’ll pay the data transfer rates (up to a certain point) but at 70% the author pays them. Believe it or not, my rate of return is actually better at 30% than it is at 70%!

However, the GuitArchitect’s Guide to… books are SO large that even at the lower rate, I’d have to pay the transfer rates on each book. This means that I’d either need to sell them for MUCH more money than the current versions are selling for, or actually lose money at the current rate of sale.

This doesn’t mean that the project is doomed, but it does mean that the Kindle Editions of the GuitArcitecture books will have to be radically altered. They’ll be more list oriented with less graphic representations. Which will still be a good and useful thing, but it will be a very different book for the ones that have currently been released.

For those of you with the current PDF, I’d recommend sticking with it because the Kindle will have way less graphic information on it.

Again…Why Kindle?

For those of you doing the math, may wonder why someone would even take the time to port to Kindle at such a low rate of return.

In a word, volume.

Amazon is the largest online retailer on the planet (and probably the largest single retailer by now). Putting something in the Amazon pipeline means that it’s potential exposure to people who don’t know you is huge. People who have readers want to read books. They’ll look on Amazon to see what to read. If people have to make more than one click to buy something, it’s all over. So if you want to sell to people using Kindles – you have to sell on Amazon.

The downside is that the market is a million times bigger but there are also a million other fish in the pond.

Volume is a necessity for the author then as well. The only way to make money at a venture that involves selling books at the $1.99 price point is to have multiple downloads on multiple titles. If someone like a book generally the first thing they’ll do is see what else you’ve written.

Anyway, his is the rationale behind the efforts to release multiple titles on the platform.

I’ll have a lot more up about Kindle and branding and the GuitArchitecture site implications in all of this in a future post, but I thought that you might find the behind the scenes interesting.

In the meantime, I hope you can check out the books, and as always – thanks for reading!

-SC

PS – as a reminder you can find out about my other books (Including my new $5 Pentatonic Visualization Lesson Book on Fiverr) here.

Detriment Versus Determination

Posted on September 6, 2012 by GuitArchitecture

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.

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.

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

-SC

Updates, Recycled Lessons And New Posts

Posted on August 30, 2012 by GuitArchitecture

Hey everyone!

By and large, I just have a few updates here.

The site got a new layout! It’s less THX-1138 and more product photo shoot, but it should at least be easier to read. It’s affected some of the layout and links and I’m cleaning them up right now.

A new “old” lesson

This will include adding links to the Guitar-Muse lesson series that I’ve been doing into the “lessons” section.

While new player profiles are in the increasingly infamous pipeline, I thought I’d post a video that I found as I was looking for a file on my hard drive.

I shot this video back in early 2011 to go along with the Chord Recycling Lesson series I was posting at the time. After watching it back, I was flabbergasted with the sheer volume of “um”‘s in the lesson and planned on re-shooting the lesson with something novel like a script.

Then I got knee deep into other projects and so that never happened. ; )

I found this again and decided to post it as, while it doesn’t represent the most articulate lesson that I’ve ever given, I think it conveys the ideas well, and it shows a number of ways to get new chord and solo sounds from a shape that you already know!

The related lessons for this are:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Chasing Tone Article

Speaking of Guitar-Muse, I just added a new article to the “Evolution of a Live Rig” series. You can read the newest installment part 2 here, or part 1 here.

Eventually a lot of gear pieces old and new are going to be migrating to the Guitar-Muse site as I want to focus the GuitArchitecture site more on the performance, philosophical and psychological aspects of performance.

Kindle Books

Are in final stages of editing and should be out soon!

That’s it for now. As always a number of new things are on the horizon and as always, thanks for reading!