RE: Learning in Music, etc

["Krispen Hartung" <info@krispenhartung.com>]

I once tuned a spare guitar to 5ths, like a violin...similar to how
Fripp tuned his guitars (I started at a low Bb and still felt as if my
neck was going to pull off its bolts).  It produced a lot of interesting
chords and scales, especially if I used my prior fingering for them, but
other than this, I thought the learning experience just threw me back in
time to the rudiments and was a waste of time. In short, speaking for
myself, it was just another "gimmick" to hide the fact that I had lost
motivation to learn on my current setup. In my opinion, there is plenty
of learning potential on the guitar fretboard with standard tuning. My
only excuse for not learning is laziness and lack of motivation.
Wheneve I think that I have reached the end of learning on the guitar, I
jus remind myself that I can find about 3000 pages of new material that
will keep me busy for 25 years, and not just theory, but real, practical
work.  

Taking on new instruments is fun...I have the sitar, tablas, and tongue
drum in my studio now, which I play when I'm bored with the guitar. My
first instrument was the flute, a age 9, then the sax.  However,
learning new instruments generates a lot of breadth of learning and
experience, but not necessarily depth and mastery in a single
instrument. I just had to face the cold and hard fact that going into
more depth on the guitar is not easy, nor is it always fun....which
lends to the lack of motivation.  It requires serious focus, stamina,
and just rolling up one's sleeves and making it a top priority.  When
I'm working 10-14 hours a day for a fortune 500 company and trying to
maintain a healthy family life, this priority doesn't always rise to the
top.  

Sometimes just making beautiful music, regardless of whether it pushes
me and I'm learning more, is what I need to make it through the week.

Kris


-----Original Message-----
From: Matthias Grob [mailto:matthias@grob.org] 
Sent: Monday, October 25, 2004 11:03 AM
To: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com
Subject: Re: Learning in Music, etc


>L. Angulo wrote:
>
>>Try playing the guitar in a different tuning and you
>>are born again guitarrist!
>>
>
>Works for me.

not so much for me.
I find some music pretty quickly on any instrument or tuning, and its 
interesting what comes out. the instrument itself is a great source 
of inspiration. The non-instrument (voice, body sounds) even more! but
mostly I love to just let go and get the notes I have in mind, so 
for this the instrument needs to be profoundly tuned with the player. It
great to speak a lot of languages, but you got your motherlanguage 
to develop and an accent which people hopefully like a

I think we should see licks and stuff we are used to mostly as a
treasure. There is no need to vary the language a lot, just enritch.
Sure, some 
of the said exercises can help to this.
But if you feel ok to just play the same kind of stuff over and over 
again, you probably note that it ends up changing anyway... more
evolution than revolution :-)
-- 


          ---> http://Matthias.Grob.org