About Music #1

If we could perceive what is really 'out there'...  

it would be much too confusing.  

Music can help us to at least feel it and sense it.  

music can help focus that now moment.  

It can help by building a bridge between silence and I AM.  

Music uses air as a partner,  

a partner which can be a very unreliable medium;  

it's composition and execution relying on a very precarious atmosphere...  

where silence is the canvas. 

So, although music cannot travel as fast as the now,  

which is traveling at the speed of space;  

music can help us to play on that field where space emerges from time. 

The loftier achievement of music is to help us break through that anesthetic of familiarity,  

and just be grateful for the gift of awareness.  

Music can help put us in a space where we can contemplate consciousness,  

and marvel at the illusion!

about music#2

Pushed aside are the rules and guidelines  

Those this and that's developed by cleaver minds  

Gone are the multiples  

There is now just one beat -  

no longer encumbered by the continuing fractal divisions  

There is but one note -  

and all it's continuing overtones 

There is no style- 

just sound 

There is no genre, no categories- 

just absolute/pure music

Improvising

Acoustical Space - time signals...with sources from both preconceived ideas, and unknown positions.Improvising :  

While playing music...freely improvising sound, the spell is so easily broken by doing.  

That doing is more than just hearing, listening and enjoying. It is making conscience decisions.  

Then the mind so easily falls into making judgements.  

While riding that wave of full potential where all directions and choices are possible - Energy dancing on the playing field which is your instrument - becoming that which you are expressing at one with the sounds.  

Unconcerned with how well you are doing time becomes the master of space suspended, where gravity fails.  

Trapped here now held hostage, hooked on the harmony in perfect timing with every beat.  

Then mind makes a conscious "artistic" "creative" choice, and it collapses.  

-  

-  

Cursed and blessed with this existence where knowledge and technique - "craft" as an extension of will, allows one to venture out.  

Then contemplate this awareness and consciousness. But now left experiencing the solid, the slow life of low potential, of mass and finite distances where gravity takes hold of the music.  

A birth and death cycle of earthly time where past and future have meaning and the music allows us to steal it's soul, it's truth, and it's power.  

The never ending potential, has given up an existence of infinite possibilities.  

Mind now uses cleverness and craftsmanship and create "Art".  

Now sound is only a slave to be used in our service.  

The musical power, truth and soul easily exploited.  

Music no longer wild, free, and magical; but tamed and magical.  

And still..we love the sounds...

about music #3

(This is an area where language falls short.) 

Always try to remember that it is not a lack of knowledge or technique that keeps you from making music. What matters in music making is intent when you play. Then keeping focused; maintaining that intention.  

In "art" when playing - to believe it is to be sincere.  

The beauty is in the act of becoming (playing).  

Work on trying to direct your self-consciousness toward feeling- That sincerity and that becoming are your goals.  

BUT--Art is play- it has no goals--So work on your intent.  

Your intent might just be--- "getting thru a song from beg. to end without any big flubs"---"to dive headfirst or heart first into ...?"-"to reach out and touch a listener" (an audience of one ?) - "to find that sound, those notes" -"to develop physical technique"---"to force my technique onto the music".  

(The problem in having a lot of technique is that you are then tempted to use it. Then to wonder if someone else enjoys it.)  

THE MUSIC- is a vehicle to carry your intent.  

What you've got, what you want and what you need; is revealed. Your intent will show thru.  

The obstacles in your way are easy to push aside- gone from between you and your music making.  

That which gets in the way is- that which you cherish, value, have invested in- those that you are attached to-  

Your style, technique, instrument, your "art".  

As a musician, You block your ability to play by thinking about how it sounds, --Just enjoy the sound.  

Address concerns when you study, rehearse, practice.  

Study-enjoy learning more "things" -Rehearse and gain a clearer vision. -Practice and seek perfection. - But forget those "things" when making music.  

In order to play well (at the top of your game) ----- stop asking questions! (What?)

tuning

music as a drug

Your brain releases addictive drugs when you listen to music that is pleasing to you. These in turn addict you to those particular musical passages which "turn you on". As a player you experience these "peak flows" and are continually looking for more of these "highs". 

Those players whom experience the most drug releasing "highs" are those who are improvising real time composer/players. Those musicians have more control over those "peak flow" tools. So continually stimulating those nerve centers in the brain to produce the drugs. 

(The scientific studies on music/brain and the studies, both scientific and philosophic on "peak flow" experiences are easily available to search.)

music/chaos

music/chaos  

Emergence from Chaos theory;  

extreme sensitivity to initial conditions--say the note is 440hz exactly--if 441 then it would determine a different outcome---also if the musician is thinking different everything about that notes emerging properties is going to be a different outcome.  

In making music (live playing) obviously our thinking is the most influential input. 

The musicians thinking is the "strange attractor" in "phase space". (scientific terms)Chaos operates to create structure and that structure is the strange attractor. 

The musician operating in what I call a pure music state continually creates new musical patterns in a completely unpredictable ways...the music is always creating it's own infinite detail causing this extreme sensitivity...the musician is a "fractal"(math term). 

The music created by a living human musician (as opposed to a computer), does not follow those maths, but the musician/artist usually takes the simple and makes it endlessly complex instead, creating new novel and exciting ways of balancing on a delicate edge between chaos and order.

About Music#4

Who told you that you could improve on the silence? Has your culture taken the time to teach you about silence? And if it has are you sure it is not just another cultural explanation to control you?  

All the "western" science/philosophy and the "eastern" religion/philosophy, concentrates on explanation. All languages have been used to move you from the nonthinking mind to the thinking mind. You no longer trust yourself to know more than that.