Lightly does it.

There is a lot of talk about bees and the falling numbers of butterflies and general degradation of wild life and many of us wring our hands and say that we support conservation BUT we do nothing about it.
What is needed, and this is not just my opinion, is that people should do nothing! Just leave their gardens uncut and let the wild flowers take over and then the flowers needed for the insect life would return and the biodiversity would rebalance. HOWEVER we would incur the wrath of …. the neighbours.
Where I live, the profusion of wild flowers if left is mind boggling but the people who live in the villages are often fighting a war with the weeds and the insects that although critical to the eco system are not the ones liked by the villagers. Weeds, gnats, wasps, snakes, flies and mice are essential food for the birds bats and other hunters however if they poison everything in sight then we are going to destroy what we want; such is human stupidity.
We are now aware that saving one species requires the saving of many others and in the final analysis if we lose the lower layers of the food chain the top layers will collapse, hello that is us!
For me, my interests in music come from a deeper interest in life in general it is where I get my inspiration and this is what I encourage others to do; to find theirs. Apart from the Bluescampuk courses where people are taught the tricks of the trade so that they can play and write songs I also do more abstract courses in woodlands where we go back to older forms of music and its inspiration; that of nature both in the natural word and the esoteric because for our ancestors nature was divine. For them the trees and plants were sentient beings and along with the animal spirits they could be communicated with and used as allies, and for this they would use music.
This sounds to the modern ear rather crazy but the basic plot of altered realities are the biggest sellers in movie and song so there is still a desire for that way of thinking even if it is just a creative dream.
Many musicians and artists become passionate about conservation but I am suggesting that we can go better than that we can be revisionists’ getting back some of what we have lost but to do this we need to change our minds. I think that we are doing this in many ways and if you look back over the past 100 years many things have got better. I am not suggesting that we need to go back to mud huts but we need to use our humanness and our technology to fit back into nature because there really is no way we can carry on like this and change when it comes will be very fast. We have already seen this with regard to the collapse of the banking sector, it was not a slow thing it was almost overnight.
Again I am giving the general attitude a kicking as I often do, normally it is education but I would also say that we have a mind-set that the experts of got it under control. Well they had experts organising the banks, we have experts in the government and experts in the health sector so I think I will leave with two quotes, one from a sage and one from an Emperor.
Napoleon first; someone was put up for promotion to Marshall because he was such an expert in tactics and leadership. Napoleon was unimpressed by how much of an expert this gentleman was, what he wanted to know was ‘Is he lucky’. So much for logic!
The Taoist sage Lao Tzu said that people should be governed as you would cook a small fish; lightly. This may be true for gardening as well.
Vic
 
 
  www.bluescampuk.co.uk  learn to play ...........

One word of caution

‘My one word of caution is that a cow chewing contentedly in a field, once you have looked over the wall and seen what is out there, chewing the same old grass never seems quite so satisfying again.’ – Nigel Twinn

At one of the schools in which I teach they have introduced a scheme through the pupil premium where the pupils can have music lessons to develop their self-esteem. I am teaching either guitar or singing and there is also a drum teacher.

This seems to be an enlightened idea and I know that if they are able to acquire a skill that means they achieve something, maybe performing or passing a grade they will have something different and positive in their school lives which quite honestly they are not getting at the moment.

Over the years that I have taught I have often heard from past pupils that music has been something very special and it has really changed the way they view the world. For some they realised that the teachers at school who told them that they were spending too long on music and should be working on their science had got it wrong. In one case this was viewed from the stage of the Hollywood bowl and he reflected that the best thing he ever did was to stop doing science.

I have also a number of pupils who would say that music has become a religion or certainly a spiritual experience which informs them about life on a deep level. I spend a lot of time listening to great musicians and I would say that this is something that figures significantly for many deepening their experience and adding something that ordinary life does not give them

So maybe they need to heed the warning that music will change one’s life in ways that you cannot see in this moment making you realise that you are special so special that you are a musician.

Vic

 

www.bluescampuk.co.uk

 

check it out!

 

 

 

 

 

Play like you don’t know. - Miles Davis

This is a story that Santana tells about Miles talking with Eric Clapton, for me it gives us an insight into the workings of the mind of a genius. We have gone so far down the road of the clever clogs where we anal-ise the hell out of everything that we end up with a sterile piece of sound. There is a joke about the similarity between analysing a joke and dissecting a frog to see how it works; the result, you end up with a dead frog.

Miles came to music from a line that said it is not the technique or the knowledge that mattered it is the feeling, as he would of said playing ‘from the heart not the head’. But is that not true of everything, education, medicine, relationships, politics? We have become too clever by half, lots of things can be a lot simpler and far more effective and this is so true for the art of music making.

So sit down and listen to some Muddy Waters and feel what is going on because it sure damn well isn’t in the number of notes or the complexity of the scales and chords.

Vic

 

www.bluescampuk.co.uk

 

 

Be lazy like a fox’. Linus Torvalds

This is similar in many ways to ‘Do not reinvent the wheel’ the solutions are out there and some have been used over and over again throughout history so look for the answer that is staring you in the face. Sometimes this answer is to be found in someone that you know you just need to ask around.

I have found that many people that I teach have skills that I need, whether that is fixing a computer, sorting out software problems, advice on building websites, finding somewhere to live, advice on gardening or fixing the car, but in all of these cases I would not have known unless I asked and also suggested swapped lessons for their time and knowledge.

I have got the point that I am quite lazy and I always look for the simple ways to deal with problems which are often cheaper, this has led me to looking into recycling and what is now termed upcycling. This is something that can be used for electric guitars, taking knackered instruments and rebuilding them incorporating parts of other guitars or ‘junk’ like old vinyl LPs for scratch plates, or making plectrums from old credit cards.

We need to consider that people in the past were as clever and in many ways cleverer than we are today, some experiments suggest that the Victorians had higher IQ’s than we do so look back to see the solutions that previous generations adopted for solutions as their main resource was ideas.   

Vic

Focus on what you want not on what you do not

Listen to the news, there is always a focus and analysis on what we do not like, want or desire and virtually nothing on want we really value or wish for. We give this negative aspect our added attention and we mull over this and run it over and over until it becomes a habit. The glass becomes half empty in fact you are feeling that someone else is about to steal it or it is full of so many chemicals that it is not safe to drink.

If we turn these things around life can be so much better, we do not focus on the bad we focus on the things that we want, this means that we start to make more interesting choices and when life gives us lemons we make lemonade. For us as teachers we look not at the exam nerves or performance anxiety but we look at the opportunity to play to someone that we have not seen before and enjoy the feeling of making music.

Great art is often forged in visiting dark places but better to do this as an observer; there is a point where we can put some sort of emotional charge into what we focus on and it becomes part of our belief system but if you are the actor then you can distance yourself from the emotional feelings. I have met a number of people who have become rather screwed up by what they do but not every actor that plays an evil character becomes a murderer! However there are some roles in the theatre which are infamous for their negative impact on the psyche of the actor like the role of Lady Macbeth or one of the witches.

By focusing on what you want and not on what you do not want we can make sure that your pupils believe in their ability to learn and develop and that all things are possible and in that way they will achieve great things.

Vic

 

So let us use our limitations to be creative.

‘Then one day in 1965, he came by my house to say goodbye before leaving for Hong Kong where he said he intended to become the biggest star in films. “You remember our talk about limitations?” he asked “well, I'm limited by my size and difficultly in English and the fact that I am Chinese, and there never has been a big Chinese star in America films. But I have spent the last three years studying movies and I think that the time is ripe for a good martial arts film - and I am the best qualified to star in it. My capabilities exceed my limitations”.

This was a small man whose right leg was an inch shorter than his left and was seriously short sighted which for a martial artist was rather a handicap but got over this by wearing contact lenses which in the 1960's where not the most comfortable!

The man in question was Bruce Lee and this story comes from Joe Hyams who wrote a book called ‘Zen in the martial arts’.

Bruce Lee made a point of saying that because he was sort sighted he trained first in close quarter Wu Shu and then when he got contact lenses learnt to fight from a distance. For his short leg he formulated and perfected a stance which led to his powerful kicking technique.

The history of achievement is full of people that started with a disadvantage and because of their determination to be as good as others the skills that they developed from their disability meant they surpassed their rivals.

For me the great example is that of Django Reinhardt probably the greatest jazz guitarist of all time. Django an illiterate gypsy was so brilliant  that after hearing a piece of Bach once could play it back on the guitar; his playing was truly amazing but Django only had two fully functional fingers on his fretboard hand so the licks that he played that seem impossible anyway were played by someone with a crippled hand.

So let us use our limitations to be creative.

 

Vic

 

Its a pentatonic scale Jim, but not as we know it.

A few years ago I was at a guitar show in London doing a number of sessions for the RGT about the guitar exams and in one of the breaks I was hanging around the stalls looking at the guitars. The noise at these shows is incredible with hundreds of people playing on the instruments and what you hear is a sort of pentatonic hell where the twiddling fingers of young males are shredding their way to some chaotic frenzy.

I reflected that they were using the same scale as used by Hendrix, Clapton and just about every other rock guitarist yet none of them sounded that good because quite simply just as the meaning of language is more than just the words the meaning of music is more than just the notes.

The great blues players were able to get great music from one chord and a few notes and we miss that in the race to complexity and therefore going back to the roots players for any form of music be it the roots of gospel, soul, reggae, African township or folk will give you an insight into what really works in the musical form.

I have four years of guitar magazines that are unread sitting in the teaching room with loads of technical stuff in them, however  going back to simple songs and solos has given me fresh insights into the things that got me interested in the first place and helped to add something to the music that I do now.

I think it is a very valuable life lesson.

Vic

 www.Bluescampuk.co.uk  check it out and join in the fun..........

 

 

 

In the house of lovers, the music never stops, the walls are made of songs and the floor dances.- Rumi

That is a great house to live in!

We create our immediate world by how we think. This became very clear to me over the years because one’s mind set filters and creates the choices that we make.  If we are full of unhappiness our minds find those things for us as the genie says,’ yes master your wish is my command’ and we conjure something to fulfil our wishes of despair.

I believe it is about choices that we make based on our programming and that is why I think we need to be careful not to just go with the status quo. History proves that the status quo is often seriously lacking in common sense for one thing.

I have lived long enough to have lost a number of significant people in my life and I have realised that when you look back there are many things that were unsaid that should have been and if I had been truly in the moment I would have said how I happy I was to those close to me. Now I make a point of saying it because in my experience people are often taken by surprise and it makes their day better.

One of my joys is playing music with others and I often say how much I enjoy their playing and again they are often surprised because they do not hear that.

The secret of music is that it travels with you in your body and therefore even if you are alone it is your companion, the Greeks were right to say that the Muses brought music to you and that you could call on them to create and share your energy with them as long as you were generous in spirit to others. I do not share the modern idea that music is a set of rules; it is like saying that someone is a good carpenter because he has good tools, the tools help him but they are not the reason that he is a good carpenter. The rules of music help us but what is important is the love you put into it and it is a great way to build a house, with or without a carpenter.

Vic

 

www.bluescampuk.co.uk   check it out

Music is a language that expresses emotion and transfers that feeling to the listener.

When we listen to language we hear the words and then express those words in ways that we are personally programmed to understand them. This is fraught with problems, when we say something the meaning that we connect to the words can often be lost in translation with the words meaning something else to the listener. Take for instance a word like ‘dog’ this will mean something to a dog lover and something emotionally different to someone with a fear of dogs.

Words take on different meanings with the introduction of tonality and emphasis. Language is unreliable just listen to a politician and notice how they ‘answer’ a question. When we think of the word myth we often interpret that word as lie or fairy tale but myth was something much deeper than that.

Myth contains within the story truths hidden in the text using deep structure and metaphor therefore within the tale there is a truth that connects with the unconscious. It is possible to view many ancient stories in this way bringing new meaning to them such as the Arabian Nights and the stories of the Genie being an instruction manual of the mind and how to reprogram your thoughts. It is the same with language, that much is going on in the deep structure of the communication which the great orators in the past understood.  

Music has the same aspect of carrying emotional messages through the song both in the sound and the lyric much of this is locked into your memories of when you heard that music originally but much of this is about deeper things in the sound.

There seems very little of this being passed on to pupils when they learn, particularly in classical music. Only much later does the idea of the musical energy seem to be introduced, if at all, shame it seems to be what music is all about.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk 

 

 

 

 

Smell the Music

Playing on a Saturday night in a small bar in Chelmsford in Essex, no rehearsal just a bunch of numbers on a sheet, great stuff!  Some of these songs I have not played for thirty years and what is amazing is how easily they come back.

Memory is incredible; you just need to hit the right buttons and then out it comes. There are certain triggers that work amazingly well for creating memory recall, one of these is smell. Have you ever had a time that you smelt something and it took you to a memory that was so real that it felt like time travel?  I have, it was the smell of Bunsen burners and it took me back to the chemistry room at school to the point that I was standing in the school science room, quite extraordinary.

When learning music the more that you layer memory with sensory information the better, this may explain why the great players always look like they are totally involved  in the music; maybe that is their secret .

When learning or teaching have an internal film of the song that locks to the music and make it so real that you are standing in it and you can feel the atmosphere and the smells of the landscape make it more than real, this will help with the dynamics and deals with performance nerves. Just think of what the music makes you visualise and then use the pictures to relate to the music.

One of the problems that people often experience in playing is that they never play out as well as they do at home a bit like public speaking, we speak all the time but for some reason when we get up to speak in public we find it difficult, why? because we think about it and then all our programming goes out the window, but picturing and adding other senses to the music takes you to the same place wherever you are.

 

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk   play like a pro in three days..............

 

 

 

‘Out beyond ideas of right doing and wrong doing there is a field. I'll meet you there.’ Rumi

Rumi’s quote is the idea of being in a neutral space, a disassociated state which is a powerful place to create.

Every neutral space leads us to opportunity some good, some bad and even within that space there is a neutral space like a dream within a dream. The interesting aspect is that as soon as we ‘think’ we can polarise that space.

Rumi the great poet and the mystic was one of the minds able to transcend time and humanness to reach the depth of consciousness and paradoxically the heights of expression open to all but only found by a few. He was able to express in a few words deep meaning in the areas of thought and reality of mind.

Exploring this in teaching and music we need to look at what we think of as right or wrong and suspend judgement. If someone comes to you with dyslexia realise that this is an advantage to them becoming a great musician, also expressing that to them and their parents if they are children will create a positive vibe which will aide their learning. I have often found guitarists with dyslexia are great improvisers.

If someone comes to you as a bright intellectual person suspend judgement and it will help you to discover the things that hold them back from learning how to express themselves. This is the problem for many adults.

True learning is so deep that it often does not make sense on the surface just as the surface of the sea creates an illusion hiding the life forms living beneath it.

Vic

 www.teachmusic.co.uk  free email article

www.bluescampuk.co.uk learn to play in a rock band 

‘Let us not look back in anger, not forward in fear, but around in awareness.’ James Thurber.

This quote could have easily been written by the great samurai warrior Musashi whose teaching was that the mind and the eyes should always stay the same; eyes open to all things and the mind relaxed but alert even in the heat of a battle.

For us many have never had to deal with life threatening situations but we are still wired up in the same way as our ancestors and therefore when small events happen we tend to over compensate for them.

The levels of stress that people experience not only cause problems with their health but also on a social front. In the past we would have experienced something very physical such as fight or flight that would have dissipated that stress, now we have to put up with Ofsted and other small problems without the ability to burn off the stress. (Maybe there is a business idea here of the ‘Ofsted inspector punch bag’ that could be a good seller).

I have looked at using aspects of human emotional energy in performance techniques such as using memories of sadness, anger and happiness and it is very powerful; it is often the missing ingredient that makes a reasonable performance outstanding. However to be the master of this one needs to be aware of what you are doing and although to take people into a trance one needs to go there first you need also to be aware and in control of that power by being disassociated from it rather like an actor.

Anger is like fire and it will burn out of control if not dealt with fully and fear stops all forward movement in life. So if you feared standing up in public maybe you should get out and visit an open mic event and step up to the microphone.

Vic

 www.bluescampuk.co.uk for three days of playing in a band and learning rock tricks.

 

 

 

The miracle is not to fly in the air or walk on water, but to walk on earth.

When working through ideas for music we often become drawn to the amazing and fantastical and maybe this is something that we tend to do in life generally. But looking deeper into the world of music we actually respond to those who connect with us in an emotional and not a cerebral way.

The great blues players, the great reggae musicians, the flamenco players and the world musicians know this deeply and when I say ‘know this’ I mean ‘know’ on an intuitive level. Because of our education system we are trained that everything should be in your ‘head’ and you have to be thinking, thinking and then thinking which stops us using the greatest gift that we have, the unconscious, and this operates at its best when we are in the flow or in the zone and strangely this happens when we are grounded.
I heard a quote once from a saxophone teacher from the US that said when you are improvising you should ‘think about the soles of your feet’ in other words stop the chatter in your head of which notes to play and focus your thoughts somewhere else.
What better way to put it that getting to the basics of being human may hold the answer to the questions of life which philosophers have pondered for ages but ironically the answer maybe not to think about it but feel it through your feet.
Vic

Learn about yourself - join a band

Music and the arts open up the mind to new ways of exploring the world, whether that is spirituality, personal relationships, sports or business,  in fact anything that we can term the human experience because through music and the arts we are dealing with various areas of consciousness and within that, creative thinking, and then its outward expression.

In a way it is possible for anything one does to do that but I believe that music, because of its potentially abstract nature, can get to the depths of what makes us tick as humans and in contrast by its structural nature we can see how we operate as ‘organised’ beings.

My interest in music started as a young teenager picking up the guitar for the first time and playing my first chords and then learning how to play a blues, that was it, I was hooked! Is that what we need to achieve as a response from customers, to get them hooked?  Is that not what we need for ourselves to really become masters of any skill, to be hooked? Music can teach us how this can happen.

Over the years I have taught many people to play guitar and to sing and many have carried on playing years after, some becoming professional players and some working with very famous musicians. In that time I have watched and learnt as I taught and with my interest in psychology I have unpicked the way the mind sorts, files and then uploads skills. Some of these elements are conscious but many are unconscious.

It has often been said that the greatest fear for people is the fear of public speaking, even ranking higher than the fear of death in some polls. The idea of standing up in public and giving a performance will fill many with panic but as a musician it is your ‘stock in trade’ to perform especially as a front man for a band;  not only do you have to sing but also to talk to the audience and get them to clap and sing along. The art of fronting a band and dealing with performance nerves is one lesson that anyone in business would find useful and the skills are simple to learn, just play in a band. 

So there we are, play an instrument and learn about yourself and the world around you.

Vic

 

www.bluescampuk.co.uk

  

 

 

A cautionary tale for the discourteous

A cautionary tale for the discourteous
As a DIY artist, you have to make and maintain contact with lots of folks: bookers, agents, recording engineers, managers, bands, DJs, program directors, journalists, bloggers, designers, producers, fans, and many more.
And even when you don’t get the desired result, it’s important to remember something you probably learned when you were two years old: BE POLITE!
What happens if you’re rude? You don’t get hired back, or worse — your band gets black-listed from clubs in LA, and is written about in SPIN Magazine for all the wrong reasons........
go to ...
http://diymusician.cdbaby.com/2013/03/be-polite/

Chris Robley

The Way of music

Concerning the Way - Confucianists, Buddhists, tea masters, masters of ceremonial practices, Noh dramatists and such – none of these are within the Way of the Warrior. Even though their Ways are not ours, if you know the Way broadly, not one of them will be misunderstood. It is essential that each person polish his own Way well – Miyamoto Musashi

 

One thing about music that I love is that by learning its Way you learn so much about yourself and the world around you. I teach this dealing directly with the functioning of our mind and that to learn efficiently you will need to know how the brain works, and then you will become able to learn the technique of playing with great ease.

Due to my interest and maybe my addiction to music I have begun to understand how music changes the state of consciousness of the listener and the player and how our ancient forebears used it for ceremonial use. This really came home to me when I was in South America listening to the icaros of the shaman and how it ramped up their work; this introduced me to the notion that great musicians particularly from roots styles of music have that ability to change states of mind.

I was playing through some old blues numbers by Muddy Waters and you can see that this man who Eric Clapton called ‘Buddha’ could play one riff for several minutes and sing a song that would drive an audience into a frenzy (Mannish Boy) or sing a song about the magical charms that he had and how he was destined to be a great man (Hoochie Coochie Man). This is easily found in all other musical forms, Bob Marley and Bunny Wailer in Reggae, Jimi Hendrix in rock music, Elvis Presley in Rock and Roll and John Lennon in Pop music, where the musician would take you on a journey to a different place which you could say was ‘spiritual’.

What is interesting for me is that when you see what really works on a deep level in one sort of music you will recognise it in other forms of music and then in other places, such as sport, business human relationships because music is a reflection of human consciousness.

As Musashi says if you polish your Way, you will understand all others; not one of them will be misunderstood.

 

Vic

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Good Time to Plan

It is nice to see the sun back this week and although we need the rain, snow and the icy wind it is still lovely to see the beginnings of spring.

It has been rather a long winter and I think the birds have found it difficult as well with a limited supply of berries from last year due to the weather.

When the weather gets better I tend to forget how bad the travelling is and I settle back into the groove of work whereas I was planning on lots of things when I was struggling with the early starts.

A couple of my friends who teach at schools as classroom teachers are leaving the profession because of the ridiculous pressure that they feel and coupled with that the ‘tick box’ mentality that has now resulted from an overbearing ofsted.

In their cases the weather does not play a part in the decisions because the pressure is on all of the time. Thankfully I really enjoy what I do but the continuous travelling is getting to me.

When continuous pressure is part of the scene we know that it creates extreme stress in people because they feel that they have no control. So I would suggest that ofsted will eventual destroy the fabric of teaching because simply the best teachers would have left the profession because the pressure for accountability has become more important than teaching.

Let me suggest an idea; think of something that you learnt at school that was for you a life changing lesson and I would guess that it was in a moment, something that really impacted you and more importantly something that was not scripted, planned or dare I say it evaluated, it was inspired in the moment, and for you it was life changing.

My point here is that lots of what we put up with in modern education is bullshit and is only something put together to satisfy the mentality of accountability. 

Now is now a good time to plan whist enjoying the better weather, we are here to live not to be a statistic of GDP.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk

 

 

 

Wouldn't it be great to be gifted?

Wouldn't it be great to be gifted? In fact...

It turns out that choices lead to habits.

Habits become talents.

Talents are labelled gifts.

You're not born this way, you get this way. – Seth Godin

 

As musicians we know this already although sometimes we act as if we have forgotten but the simple fact is the time you put in builds into habits and then we see these habits become ‘natural talent’.

I have always thought of the phrase ‘they are talented’ as a sort of get out, which overlooks the amount of sweat and commitment that someone has put in; when I see someone play I see the number of hours displayed in the performance.

For those who are outside of anything that requires continued practice and dedication the achievers are often thought of as ‘naturally gifted’ but as cellist Mstislav Rostropovich put it when asked about his genius he said it was one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent perspiration.

The by-product of the layperson’s attitude is the number of new pupils who turn up who do not realise the amount of practice time required to achieve the level that they aspire and for some it comes as a shock!

 

Vic

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Getting Gigs

Gigging experience is invaluable, and the more you play live, the more confident your playing will become and the better your performances will be.

While you can hold rehearsals in gig-like conditions - not stopping playing if someone messes up for instance – it still can’t fully prepare you for looking up from your instrument and seeing a roomful of people staring back at you, wanting to be entertained.

Aside from bringing in money and increasing your fanbase, playing gigs gives you a chance to see which of your songs work best in a live setting. You may have a song that's a personal favourite, but if the bar suddenly becomes very busy whenever you play it live it might be time to take another look at it. Similarly, when preparing for a gig, it’s not uncommon for band members to squabble over what gets included in the setlist. You may be happy to play certain songs in practice, but if you don’t want to play them live there’s probably a very good reason. Even established bands banish songs from their setlist because they don’t work in a live environment.

It’s easy to get stuck in a rut and lose drive when you’re making music, so booking a gig can breathe new life into the band – forcing you to polish off any rough edges in your material before you unleash your tracks in a live setting. It can be just the thing to make you nail that hard to play riff or key change - nothing gets a band playing tightly like the fear of performing in front of a room of people they don't know.

Originally from the BBC website

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/introducing/advice/playinglive/gettinggigs/

 

 

If the king loves music, there is little wrong in the land- Mencius

How much is music valued in your land? Is it looked upon as an extra expensive something that little Jonny does as a hobby or is it looked upon as the life affirming healer that creates bonds through sound?

Music expands the right side of the brain that the formal education system seems to miss and in this age of the religion of science it also gives us a doorway into the creative world of the unconscious and the dreamtime which is the territory of the genius.

I value music highly because I do not think there is much to be gained by being boring and limited by the belief systems of the rational. The rational do not stretch themselves to create a better world that is done by the dreamers, the rational edit those dreams and then hopefully find a way of these things happening.

At the moment there seems to be resurgence in the arts but not through government funding but through people trying to enrich their lives.

Make sure that you ride that wave and make your teaching and playing relevant. We are moving in ‘interesting times’ and that as in the Chinese curse can mean all sorts of things both good and bad. We all need music to raise our spirits and even in this day and age of the religion of science and rationality we still need to realise that the unconscious works in a non rational way and it is the powerhouse of our mind.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk for three days of creating and playing music in a band