A six string path

Sometimes I grow tired of repeating the stories that I tell about the Beatles; after all, I was hardly there, right?  One of the things about those for whom the Beatles were/[are] an intense experience is that they all have a different experience of what happened (“you can penetrate anyplace you go”).  Usually, I expect that others would know the stories – that is why I grow weary of telling them, who wants to be a bore about something that wasn’t really a direct experience?  Of course, that was part of the art, that we who lived then were part of the story; the Beatles documented something that happened to us all.  The story I was telling the other day was about Astrid & Stuart Sutcliffe & how Sutcliffe supposedly didn’t like to practice bass, which was “documented” in the film Backbeat, which led to McCartney being the bass player with the band ….

Many people have not heard the recorded interviews with John Lennon [“unfinished dialogue”] & Paul McCartney [“the McCartney interviews”] that were released in the 1980’s; shame, that.  In those interviews, Lennon & McCartney both gave away many of the secrets behind the art in their time with the Beatles.  While the “secrets” are actually in the lyrics also, it was some of the story telling about what was happening in their lives that revealed how the notes & chords were working together [“we can work it out”] – the connection between the spiritual & the physical is in the language of the playing, which is why practicing is so important.  What people “hear” is what the players intimate with the lyric & the music.  The note can be a leading voice, or the leading voice can be in the chord or chord changes, even the instrumentation ….

We all [seemingly] assume that time is linear; what the Beatles opened was the non linear time of a God viewpoint – God isn’t held to the linear construction, it is we who are.  In the mind of God, we can be at any point in our linear existence.  This is something that gave rise to the concept of somebody who “passes away” – they do not die, they return to another space in the mind of God, a structure of existence [“across the universe (univearth)”] to which we do not have direct access, except in the construction that God shares in the object oriented universe [“hon-mak-ku-kyo-to”].  As long as we access the memory of the recording, we access the continuum.  Looking forward, into the future of technology & music, we can hear “Nowhere Man” and see the point – the Buddha point which is reconciled by the Cross (and the death of Jesus Christ).  By understanding the construction, we can see into the story that was/is being told.

In the McCartney interviews, Sir Paul talked about how he used to sit around the radio as a child/young man and try to figure out the lyrics and parts to the music that was coming to the UK from America.  That process has been practiced by countless musicians who learn to love music from music ….  The more that one plays and practices connecting the brain to the construction, the easier it is to move into that transcendental state of playing and composing according to the construction “rules” of music theory; and then to “see” the construction as a language communication that is live for as long as the arrangement does not pass away.

Some of the interpretation that we make of music is internal to our own imagination; in some ways music is like types in the JavaScript language for the language interpreter (as opposed to the strict types of Java or C# or other computer languages).  For the really talented constructors of music, the interpretation of the voice leading is nearly a constant – they almost tell us what to think with the construction & and the construction with the lyric.  When the voice leading is from a blues “call & response” construction, sometimes there is a strict type interpretation, but other times the decay rate of the notes (the voicing strength, the playback frequency mixing/mastering, the language in which we think – and thus the rhythm of our cadence of language [not from the musical “nashville numbering” but from the spoken voice language we have]  --) influences what we hear as the leading voice/thought/construction. 

It is these “voicings” that are still alive in the Beatles, and why we still go see 70 plus year old musicians playing songs “out there” …

getting <strike>phony</strike> AT&T …[?] {out there}

This week I was listening to some old recordings by the Beatles, and for the first time – to my ears – they sounded more tied to their era than present.  For me, the memories are passing, and the reality is moving on ….

When I was in college, a long time ago, one of the best aspects of the Beatles was that they sounded current even as they were no more.  One of the experiences that I had as I dove into the pieces of the music to figure out “why is that” [?] was to find a whole different level of both engineering – on the technical side – and lyric structure – on the music side.  There will never be another explosion like the first, and the Beatles were the first – because of the circumstances of their rise in life & the art that they presented.

As I listened to the recordings, which still can take me back to the living moments when I first heard them & experienced them, I could also hear the distance of time washing over the memory of what is in the music itself.  There were two parts of the whole aural picture that were particularly special.  While there were other musicians recording on similar machines & creating similar sounds – listen to KRTH 101 while they still feature the 60’s, and you will know – the process fed the Beatles in ways that others did not get entirely, except as observers.  Learning about how George Martin produced music was a whole historical story – a lesson to be learned – in itself.  Piecing together the lyrical meaning in context and in expanded imagination is the “other half of the sky”.  Sadly, much of the importance of what is there is being washed away, at least in America, by the current crop of younger musicians – say those born in music after 1989 ….  The view of the 1960’s grows distant, lost in the current political fringes as they fight over the outcome of that previous era.  The rise of “rap music”, which was a rejection of 1960’s & 1970’s era jazz music, has penetrated the culture of “new musicians” to the point of making celebrity the point, dollars the the point, and quality of connection to History, well, not so much the point.

I hope people won’t get so lost in today that they forget yesterday … and the stories behind it … 

It’s Already There … [Double Fantasies & Magical Mysteries]

What can we think when the chords in the natural chord progression lead us to “wonderful melodies”?  Well, first of all, we can figure out that we’ve progressed beyond thinking about the chords as we play them and have landed in “the other hand”, where the rhythm of the playing juxtaposed against the voicing can create the sound we are looking to find when we get hit by “pop music” in the first place.  Maybe that isn’t other’s experience, but it is mine.  I remember when I didn’t play music seriously; then I heard differently than I heard when I started to play for real.  It was a great awakening, something I’d probably experienced millions of times before, hearing interiors of sounds that made me wonder “are these musicians talking or ‘am I imagining this’”.  When I was purely a consumer of music, I simply allowed the musicians to lead my hearing.  When I started to think about construction of music, I started to wonder if I was building things into the songs that were merely suggestions – built in the chords – or if they were intentional.  The answer of course is that it is both or dependent upon the players’ ability or intent.  Sometimes, the rhythm of a riff can be conformed to a lyrical thought that is our own but not the original intent of the player, but often the player will have the intent to create the road that we follow.  If we have a beat that doesn’t fit our lyrical conception, the timing will wind up off, and we won’t be able to stay in the beat, in the rhythm, but even if we are in the rhythm, we aren’t necessarily following a lyrical intent of the player/composer. We can fit the timing of the song’s structure to our conception of language, and if we listen long enough with enough intent, we can learn to be fairly good at improv.  This natural “it was already there” element is also one of the reasons that the rhythms written by English speaking players can translate into other Latin languages, or even into Japanese, because, ultimately, the listener is “me Co.”, and we just need to find the right fit in the music to have our “double fantasy” come true ….

A Long Summer Since …

When I was younger, I didn’t worry about time passing, and not so much about the hurry to accomplish.  It was a long long time ago now that my hope for music as a professional enterprise entered me as “a dream for someday”.  These days, I dream real life conversations about producing music and the ideas that were inspired by God for me, but still the income … .  When I was first learning about “advanced music theory” from a French bass player / composer who was talking as a “district leader” for the SGI-USA, I knew that what God was asking me was going to confuse if it wasn’t organized well and presented in an understandable progression.  “What’s that got to do with God” & “that’s not Christian” were playing in the background even as I struggled to grasp what God was saying to me.  And then there was Country music … [ the kind Taylor Swift recently abandoned because she never played it ].

When I first hit the dance floor of the Grizzly Rose in Denver – and it’s been so long now that I couldn’t tell you the band that was playing that first night, but I could tell you I’ve seen Martina McBride, Kenny Chesney, Don Williams, Mark Chesnutt and plenty of others play there – I was hooked at “the big time level”.  When I was first in this music dream, I only knew ‘rock & roll’ + a little classical; it was a district member in the SGI-USA who opened the Country music vein.  There is an energy created by music that rolls in a way that people can dance or listen, catch the wave or sit in it.  When I first started to play the instrument seriously, I could get nowhere near that rolling sound.  It intimidated me.  Beyond the mess of trying to “stay on top of the instrument” – which really means processing all the fingerings & positions & progressions while and just a moment before they are being played [in order to be in the right position to lead as a voice on the instrument (or follow as a fill to a whole unit voice)] – there was a spirit world that was full of jealousies about people who could “do that”.  The spirit world wants to make the guitar something other than what it is, a stringed instrument for communication.  Some want to make it drugs, some want to make it sex, some want to make it a representation of the wealth they deny they could ever have [ causing their jealousies ], but it is just another instrument in the making of music, which is a language that can connect to God, when it rolls.

Time passes, and we start to remember the emotions we felt when this song or that was “big”, and we get a little older and we long for the time and we long for the intimacy of relationship that youth promises but age doesn’t necessarily deliver.  Being able to get on board that train as an instrumentalist is the goal.  Doesn’t everyone pray to reach the goal … [?]

Wearing an old brown shoe … [painted]

It seems to me the more I talk, even briefly, with musicians that it isn't that I am not meeting musicians, it's that I'm not meeting musicians who have the same interests in the music that I have. This has been the case for a very long – too long – time. It isn't that I don't respect the music that they're making, because I do, and I enjoy some of it fully; but there is a seeking core inside the construction that has to be part of the creative construction conversation if the musicians are going to be on the same page – and some of that conversation could (and does in some cases) come from playing together. Still, there is a deeper level of communion with God (the Creator) which cannot be assumed. The need to talk about why you would use this structure or that structure, or if the choices are musical or random, is an important part of opening the same “story” inside the construction of the music. The construction gets reflected back in the form of response; and if you come from a different perspective about the nature of the response, then you are probably going to start diverging off into varying interpretations of what is happening.

I've heard many musicians talk about their path forward to the place where they are when I meet them. I'm not lacking for people who are sure that they know what they are doing. I'm also not lacking for people who don't care about what is inside the music; generally they are “doing what is right in their own eyes”. What I have lacked is the connection to individuals who want to offer input and insight to open the doors and open the mind to the experience of the music.

It is the experiencing of the music that is the hardest subject to approach. We generally do not talk about how the music is reflected back to us as musicians – from the light into the creative process. Learning how to be a part of the interaction of the light is the key ingredient in keeping the music alive and the musician in the moment of the spirit of youthfulness which lights the creative fires. As we become more accomplished as musicians, we tend to get stuck on the same professional chains and routine like processes that other professionals in a craft do, but we are in a creative field, and there is no real excuse for not opening up our youthful spirit as long as we have energy to do so. Part of that is accomplished by recognizing that when we are stuck, we are being put into a position where we need to listen and consider the opportunity for input. This is one of the most wonderful aspects of music as the framework for “cycles” – and of course sound is measured in cyclical sound waves [of energy].

When we come together as musicians, we have the opportunity to create a framework, a foundation point in the construction of the living relationship with the music as a vehicle of God's voice and love in our world. What we poor out of our souls is what we love. We hope people will connect. When we gather with other musicians, in our best incarnations, we try to hear each other as we play, making the experience interactive – whether by a set design for the listener audience or as a free form design for the band, with the audience allowed to jump in to hear what we are talking about [with God].

Getting to the point where we begin to talk about the production of music as an extension of the conversation of the living God just might be more than most of the people I've met really want to talk about; it is something I wonder about as I “say nothing at all” while I listen to their stories ….

When I Write, I Listen [two cranes in between spotlight 29]

One of the great tension points in the creative art of “making it in the music business” comes when we fall out of the circuit of our choices, where we lead ourselves and pad our life view with friends, associates, and people who have similar views, and into “the real world”, where there are scarcities associated with choices and people who might not share the same world view start fighting for the spotlight or the microphone – something Taylor Swift found out about …(twice?). 

There is a spiritual battle in America still; it is not a race card battle, it is not even so much an “I know better” or “I am better” battle.  It is a space and resources struggle that has been going on for centuries, but was basically brought to America with the settlements.  God built the USA land like the master architect.  We don’t really have to argue about if there is God, because you either hear and obey the first commandment or you don’t. 

The U.S. is blessed with the continental divide; the divide is both a symbolic divider between “the American ‘Mid-West’” [“the East”] & the natural American West [“the West”] & a physical divide.  While we can as natives of the American West see clearly what desert life is, we also can have a particularly rewarding experience of God, reality, dependent on Earth, dependent upon water, will, & the determination to survive.

What was natural to many of the Native American tribes of the upper Ohio and Great Lakes region was pushed into the American West by the ideas that were foreign to America from God.  Natives & “Christians” moved West from the peaceful tribes.  It was a similar experience on “the trail of tears”, but not from precisely the same Earth roots.  Even this subject starts “the argument” in some circles.  That argument started way back East – maybe even at “the triumphal entry”.

And then there was “that summer” ….  We choose to speak a common language with respect and understanding, or not.  America has a special place in the world that is coming to the crossroads.  Those intersections have come about because of both American productivity and ingenuity, and the arrival of the opening hand of this time’s “ceremony in the air”.  Technology has come to us with the understanding of both the arts and the sciences, which are fused in music, and created in the constant scope by God, the giver and creator. 

Easterners and Westerners have a different experience of what God can do.  We get into our circuits and we think we have a great idea, and then we run into the reality of costs, either in human terms or in spiritual terms or in terms of expectations to which we cling.  The Puritan remnant elements – the hard Eastern Christians – act like the Pharisees, sometimes justly pointing out our lack of humility and how we don’t glorify God & serve our neighbors; the non believers & “the liberals” gather together and tell us what they think we should do.  “Hollywood” is waiting for a decision; ratings hang in the balance.  What do we choose?

Musically, the best music of the past half century has grown out of the struggle to express the personal battle between believers, non-believers, implementers [the “Conservatives” who would liberally apply their circuit rules to all of us] & improvisers [those who sit in the “liberal arts”].  It was the rise of the singer songwriter that changed where we conversed.  The singer-songwriter who connects to our personal experience most will generally get the “best ratings”.  Gradually, even as early as the 1960’s, there was a divide in American music that was directly parallel to East/West cultural expectations and experiences, regardless of personal beliefs.  That divide sunk into the politics of the nation, as “commercial art” usually does. 

The issues can be blown out to the macro level or they can be brought back into the personal level.  When a lyric (or musical phrasing) connects with a greater audience’s experience, we tend to find the territory of “hit music” – it reaches far into broad based culture, beyond or about politics.  We document God’s story in this way, because that story is “about” our life under God.

Hidden in the science of the technology that we use for recording is the map that we’re supposed to use to communicate that we are indeed a united people.  Culturally, we have our battles for the microphone & the spotlight, but it is God who is asking us “are you ready[?]”.  If we don’t teach that communication, and practice it as writers [“singer/songwriters”] we never open the whole field of the underlying “theory” which God gave us.  Music theory, particularly “western music theory” hasn’t changed since before the dark ages [or longer], but we pretend it doesn’t mean anything, or we don’t learn that the macro connection we feel as artists [either as producers or consumers and end users] or the micro is our chance to take part in the whole culture creation of value. When we understand how to apply creation of value through our communication, then we open the door to abundance.

It is my experience that God told us an incredible story, and that we tend to ignore that story because we build into our expectations a level of pride that attaches our personal expectations to not only our point of view of what value is, but also as our projection of what others “should do” and who they “should be”.  If I as a Christian challenge other Christians to open the Lotus Sutra, consider the Mahayana line of Buddhism through T’ien Tai & Nichiren Daishonin, I might be cut out of the music in “Music City” [there’s enough evidence to show that is the truth]; if I as a Buddhist suggest to other people who “practice” to consider the implications of Christ, Jesus’ death on the Cross, and how that might impact their enlightenment in life, well, I might find myself exiled to a “small fishing island” ….

As musicians, as artists, we are blessed to be the individuals who represent the greatest connection to the culture that is our human identity; we can choose to glorify our higher intelligence, or we can lose it to the sands of time.  There are many days I wonder what we’re going to choose, the living “nowhere man” or “the fool on the hill”, but then I take a step back & consider, “living classical”, maybe they are one and the same in the story, the nowhere man living in the woods [of the emotion of desire] & the fool [in his mind].  When we make music that fuses these stories, we transcend and start the dialog. 

There is so much to talk about before we read the golden version of 1984 in the land of milk and honey, where Walter Mondale [“the Russians”] are going to raise our your taxes – as the Police {policeman on the street} told us [while touring Ukraine*?].

 

*United Kingdom Russian Applications Inside Network Extensions – “Nam-Myo-Renge-Kyo” [Happy Easter?] Suggested listening [not from the Russian Album] from Band on The Run:: “1985” … .

  

The Bridge [out of nowhere]

Sorry it’s been so long since I most recently posted here; it’s difficult being in a “life recovery program” and squeezing in all that needs to be done.  When I moved to Nashville from Los Angeles nearly five years ago now, I did so knowing that I was going into uncharted territory for me.  I was diving into an area of “music production” that was unfamiliar to me so far in my life.  It was a challenge for me, from me, to find out if God had fulfilled the meaning of “Music City USA” that had been revealed to me through the years of preparation in California, Colorado, Florida, and other places as well. 

I wasn’t a natural musician; I learned to be as natural as God allowed me.  What I mean by that is that I was never good at memorizing songs or reading music as a child, and my practice time – which existed – was mostly made up of toying around with what different sounds sounded like together.  When I moved to Florida in the mid-1990’s – ostensibly to teach Golf at a Golf School – I started on a new journey.  Music was put center as my communications link with the Creator, and I left Florida, cut out of the Golf business [a month into a “six month trial”], with a search for answers to questions that had been brewing inside me since the early 1980’s when I had started conversing with my musician friends in Los Angeles.  Those friends were introduced to me mainly through the practice of Nichiren Daishonin’s Buddhism in the Soka Gakkai International–USA; I also had a nomadic music curiosity around the then L.A. “pop music” scene.  Then, I was driven into “country music”; by the 1990’s I was entirely country, with passing “pop” awareness.  That centeredness had led me to studying “what is this business”?  I found the road in through computers and the rise of digital equipment.  When I started to link the concepts between personal & network computing and broadcasting & recording, I started to understand a calling.  Part of the lesson I learned in the golf business was that if you really want to TEACH, you need to be able to SHOW.  I went to work, hard, to become a “natural musician”.

I studied as much music theory as I could get my hands upon – in books – and which I could comprehend – in mind.  Music is not a mechanical thing of the mind, it is best as an expression of feeling, but it is a feeling that has rules that allow the freedom of the expression.  It was through the grasping at how we communicate our understanding of God through music and artistic recording and expression that I came to have a mission to understand “where is this business now”?

The “business” side of Los Angeles entertainment is full of all kinds of lessons.  There are really good people, some who are highly competitive and will show you nicely why you aren’t prepared for ‘the business’; and there are egomaniacs and not so good people who just want you out of the way.  Either way, generally, those in the business don’t want new competition.  They go out of their way to “crucify’, in a worldly, fleshly, sense those who would be their next competitor.  In most ways I suppose, this is no different than other competitive businesses where people are competing to feed a family.  The “secrets” of Hollywood are available to be learned, but it is generally a controlled learning process.

Nashville has long been a center of the Christian based publishing industry, but what that industry is has remained somewhat a mystery, just something which occurred and was accepted rather than something that was quantified and qualified.  If “Music City USA” had a difference from Los Angeles in terms of “advantages in the recording industry”, it was that the musicians had a reputation for coming through the publishing arms of the nations Christian thought machines.  If we are a Christian based nation, and art is supposed to represent the leading edges of thought, then it is important to understand the context of Nashville as “Music City USA”, and to incorporate it into the art produced.

While I’ve battled some health issues that slowed me during the past three years, I’ve also been blessed with a learning environment in Nashville.  What I’ve been able to learn is that God is always at work, but that God’s people don’t necessarily understand what God is doing, particularly when it comes to art, communications, and music.  Artistically, we push envelopes and we get into heated areas of debate that expose the size of the egos involved and the desire to be first, to put “me first” “I” first, and the more “Christian” you become by studying, the easier it is to see, as a witness of people who think they are relating to God or being instructed by God.

Over the years, I’ve developed from the perspective that it is best to start from  ideas of “what would you do that is different” ( and/or generally beyond)  what is already being done.  I was fortunate that I learned “tricks” of the golf business which taught me how to listen for God in the simple things that are right before our eyes, the “latent meaning” inside the construction of the art and the science of the task.  When computers and musical arts converged for me, the whole picture production came into view.    It’s simple, and complex. 

The hardest part of trying to “produce” this conceptual framework as a working production model has come from the abundance of people who are certain that they know what they are doing is “it” or that they know what it is that I would do.  I can’t say how many musicians I’ve listened to, some who are considered ‘top line professionals’, who really are not producing music even close to the line of the theory that God had in mind when he showed it to me … .  I’ve heard too many people who plug in their electric instruments without giving a second thought to why you would do that; I’ve heard too many songwriters who know the form of the genre format they want to work, but who are actually displaying that they are lucky not good, because there is no substance to the music they make within the theory that is God’s instruction book for music creation.  Yes, they hit some relevant points, but they fade because they are using a formula which is designed to be expanded as a “startup” point not an endpoint.  Sometimes I wonder if they’re even listening to themselves.  Sometimes, they get the formula right and the music is not bad, but ask where is it going, what’s next, and you’ll get a blank stare.  “That’s all there is”!

I realize that it is best to let those musicians go there own way.  I realize that the way that I’ve learned the approach is not the path that others have used.  Still, I can’t help but wish that somewhere – and soon – I’ll connect with even one other musician who wants to write with a God centered program for production of relevant contemporary and longer lived, at least in aim, music.  How egomaniacal is that?  Well, … .  The discussion is grounded in the reality of many of those temporary hits that aren’t actually as good when they’ve been played a few thousand times or when they are played back from the “new perspective series” in a week, a month, a year, or a decade or two. 

Part of humbly seeking the right dialogue includes letting the people who are sure God isn’t opening a door – here – think about the bridge they are crossing … . 

After all, “… he’s a real nowhere man …”!

What Could Become …

The point of trying to create an Education + Production System is built from a type of practicality from my experience.  I have been studying music for years; studying has included intensive playing as well.  One of the problems I've faced along the way is the "what for" of the music. 

I know that there is the "we enjoy hearing the music".  There was an attraction to the question 'what makes this song pull people into it'?  The music fits a type of construction.  Theory sits inside the foundation of the construction.  When I started to understand the theory, I started to look for why does it matter?  There must be something more, right?  Perhaps, perhaps not.  There have been musicians throughout time that didn't think that their music was something more, in fact some of them went out of the way to deny that there was anything other than a sound, an emotional expression.

I came to music late in life compared to my peers -- I floated around it as a child, not in it, and as a young adult I floated with it, not in it.  It wasn't until I started to realize that studying music was opening up the "story" of the peculiarities of my brain, and my brain issues, that I became devoted to trying to understand.  They say that adult learning is difficult.  They say that we tend to lose our ability to learn new things.  When I was younger, I used to think that that outcome was probably built from desire to learn as much as it was from the ability.  I kept teaching my body how to play an instrument -- guitar -- and yet my mind was nearly constantly challenging me to remember what it was I was learning physically.  

Reading music is not natural for me; in fact it is probably worse than learning a foreign language other than English, which is hardly foreign to the America we know today.  I've approached it as a process.  Know the notes and chords intuitively, and without really thinking about it while you are playing, and reading notes will follow.  This is not exactly the same as the immersion that others use, but it is part of the whole process of learning to get to the point where "music city" as I've envisioned it really is "music city".  What is that?  It is the place where a score sheet is all that is necessary for a "band" to play together the "right way" the first time ....

Music education is not just about reading music, except for some.  The limiters are like the musical artists who say that their songs don't have any other purpose or meaning than to express an emotion.  The music educator who knows how to read music and says that music education is "about music" is either hiding the truth for a reason or is just lazy about education.

Music education is about learning, communication, and knowledge.  The beginning of education comes from understanding how music score sheets, the Grand Staff came about.  It is when we start to open 'music city" from that perspective that the world can begin to change, when we can be empowered by the music, music we create & music we listen to ... .  It is when we open the music this way that we can begin to sense what could become.     

Rebecca Ryan plays keyboards …

One of the things that needs to happen this year for me is that I need to make some music with others.  This is not something that is just a want, it is a need.  There comes a point when the music idea is either a total waste of a life -- when it has overtaken your life for decades -- or it becomes something that represents your abilities, insights, and self.  I started "studying" music in the early 1980's; prior to that, I listened to music more than my peers, but I wouldn't say that I had studied music.  As I was introduced to Nichiren Daishonin's Buddhism, & it fused with my whole view of faith, I started on a path that came to a split in 1997, when the golf "instructor" employment "fell through".  Golf was not even then really me; my heart was still in the music, and when the golf ended, the music path was natural.  It was not easy.  I had to go from being a fan to being a real musician, and because I had spent all those years preparing, I had a clear idea what that entailed.  One of the best lessons I learned while learning about Golf instruction was that being able to show somebody the physical thing you are talking about becomes important when you are talking about raising the level of performance to that of a professional.  I could do that in golf to a greater or lesser extent because I was naturally gifted from childhood, I just wasn't that great a player because I seemed to move too much in the middle of the swing, something which I later figured out as more a spiritual issue in the viewpoint of the swing than something I could have done anything about.  To make a change in my swing that would have been necessary to be a great player -- a successful tour player -- I would have had to make certain changes in my swing that would have put stress on my back in a way for which I was already compensating.  I simply could not generate more rotation without putting more stress on my body.  Eventually, I learned hoe to control the urge to try to over-rotate, but that was after or near the end of the golf experience.  With music, the key is connection between the brain & the fingers.  By switching to that, I was able to open the field.  I already had developed "the ears", as I had spent much of the 1980's in the music production environment around "friends" from the SGI-USA, and my interest in figuring out if what I was hearing was what they were intending or if it was a "latent add on" never stopped growing.  

There was a feeling that came for me when I heard good music.  When I started to play [for real], I started to look for ways to create the sound that I had heard that created the feeling.  I began to study the ways the sound could be applied as an extension of the notes [frequencies] because the emotions that come with "the sound" often come as a result of the links that grow into the music -- particularly if the connections are latent because of the listener's attachments not because of the musicians' intent and design.  I went through about a ten year period when I tried to play about 4 hours (or more) a day.  I was always looking for -- in my ears -- that place of connection between hearing and playing, an improvisation that was naturally part of the flow of the music.  During that period, I went through peaks and valleys of the four stages of learning -- something learned from the golf ventures : unconsciously incompetent (the sound is not meshing, and you don't know the key progression) >> consciously incompetent (the sound has a millisecond separation that is not fused, & you still don't always know the key center or the mode) >> consciously competent (you might or might not be fusing, but you're close enough to the back-beat structure that you can record and hear what you intended, & you recognize the modes when you are playing, even if you might not remember them after the song is over) >> unconsciously competent (you hit enough to not be worried about embarrassment at an improv session & you know the key centers and can think up mode switches naturally).  The real advancement for me in my playing came when I read specifically about the CAGED system; I had seen the chord structure of the CAGED system, & I had learned the modes off of the chord structures, but how those structures were really connected in mastering the guitar had always been presented out of order in some way.  The presentation of extensions is key to whether the caged system is understood or not.  If you "get" the extensions, everything falls into place easily; if you struggle with the extensions, you need to reground in the caged structure, getting back to the basic root-third-fifth with 6ths and 7ths.  

When you are grounded in playing, the "extension" into "shells" becomes much simpler to move into and through.  The feeling I felt was always tied to that "rolling thunder", even when the thunder is one note or silence.  There is a "visual center" in the produced music.  That visual center comes through the rhythm of the parts or notes working together.    This is what I was trying to get to the point of "showing", because there is a feeling involved when the music can reach the audience by being "seen" as it is "heard", and in this I mean in an entirely audio setting, not in the sense of visual media.  This idea of a visual center inside the music performance became clear to me as I went through the years of listening and watching very good (tight) bands play together.  It later grew into questions about engineering focus and practices that had been part of the original involvement I had with music -- music engineering school in the 1980's, which lasted about two weeks because of the speed they were going (& expecting me to master the information, which I'd never had or seen in high school [at least not that I recall .-(  ]).  I'd had what I thought at the time were some "crazy revelations", ideas that fit with the religious theory & the music theory, but which were definitely not part of the specific requirements of the University track.  I understood, through time, that for some instructors, their belief was that the information was "secondary".  The information was either "latent", in which case the student was better off knowing the grounded level of the application of the latent attachment, or it was just not practical to pursue because of the number of sidebars in the allotted teaching time.  The "thunder" comes from the connection of the timing of the visual center motion and the swings in dimensions beyond the two dimensions of mono-stereo music.  The shells and extensions are ways to create full bodied sounds inside motion without having to go through the whole structure of chord construction and placement (voicing); and those shells are also part of the whole greater construction of music motion in the engineering.

Truthfully, I've not to this day -as I produce this writing- ever heard a discussion with an engineer who would admit to the level of connection that I had grown to experience, and which had been the draw for me back from golf into the music field.  The whole of object oriented engineering is like a process of extension production on the instrumentation.  This is, when you consider it, natural to the way that God designed the structure of the science.  We hear sound in a certain way; that variance in sound is measured in frequency changes and rhythm changes and volume changes.  As we get into the whole picture (whole frame) production, we start to open the way of understanding the nature of the thought of electricity, at least according to the theory.  When we do that, the natural extension should lead us back to a question about Christ, and what exactly did he mean when he said "I go before you to prepare a place" ....  The reason this is important becomes clear as the discussion evolves through the various stages and points of logic, beliefs, and practice -- theoretical proof, documentary proof, & experiential proof.  Perhaps this will be the year ... 

 

{Oh, and in case you missed "the bullet train point" in the title [Rebecca Ryan?]:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Trouble_%28band%29

}