Special Project 09

Back in 1997, at a time when I was living in NYC and still making pretty fair money, I had picked up this Stratocaster on a whim, for no other reason than to have an electric guitar in the traditional tuning. I didn’t have any explicit plans, but I did have the strong sense that if there came a time when it would be possible for me to play some music primarily for my own general health, happiness and well-being, it would be in a blues band. When I visited Seattle in September 1997, one of the things I did was to check out clubs that featured blues. And not long after moving here in December of 1997, I even organized a couple of exploratory jam sessions. But the Guitar Craft/Guitar Circle energy was cooking, and that was clearly where my work was. Strat in case and case in closet.

In the summer of 2009, the Strat had been back “out of the closet” for some time for my teaching work. Tuning the Air was about 2/3 of the way through its 7-year run, although we didn’t know that at the time since it was an open ended project that I think most of us kind of figured was going to go on forever. We were taking the summer off, so I had time to practice more generally, and look at new material we were considering for the next season. And as is usual in the summer, my teaching schedule lightened considerably (euphemism for “went into the crapper”). Not sure how Bill, Igor and I got on the subject, but I mentioned that I had been revisiting my love for electric blues and we set up a session, which immediately turned into a “something”. There was a there there, as we say. One of the other teachers at the Issaquah studio was planning the annual September weekend party he hosts at his place out in Duvall. These festivities include live bands, and we were invited to play. Nothing like an upcoming gig to focus rehearsals. It also focuses personal practice.

Personal practice was the link for me between the ongoing work I had, at that point, been doing for 25 years in Guitar Craft, and the considerably less focused work I had been doing for a couple of years with the traditional tuning.

There is a metaphor that I often use when working with students who are experienced, but feel a bit stuck. I’m enough of an old fart at this point that many of them have probably heard it several times, and inwardly roll their eyes with an “oh brother, here he goes again”, when I begin to launch into it. But here it is:

When I first moved to New York I did not know the city well. I lived waaaaay uptown, on the west side near the George Washington Bridge. My key to the city was the subway map.

I was making ends meet by working as a temp, so almost every day I went to a new location for work. I would look at the map, find the nearest subway stop to my location, plot out the subway route, and off I would go. I’d drop into a hole in Washington Heights, sit quietly for 20 minutes or so, and then I would emerge from a very similar hole in an entirely different place. Kind of like a slow motion analog Star Trek transporter.

After a while I came to know the area around certain subway stops very well, so for a long time Manhattan was a series of islands for me. Over time I got to know the city better, and I began regularly having the experience of walking in one of my “comfort zones”, turning a corner, and finding myself in another. I had no idea that the two were adjacent to one another, or even nearby. Eventually I was able to comprehend the overall organization of the city as I connected all the little neighborhoods I visited.

This is very much what I am working with when I take on a self-taught guitarist (and guitar is the most notoriously self-taught of any instrument I know). People tend to learn what they need to know in order to do the thing they want to do. We develop comfort zones in our playing and understanding. And honestly, why not? It works fine. If all they need to know is one shape of a minor pentatonic scale in order to play the music they want to play, what good is a Lydian b7 scale to them? Or reading? Or lots of inversions of upper structure triads? Or efficient technique? Or good practice habits? They don’t need it. That is, right up until they do. Then they come looking for me.

The first thing I do with this student is to identify what they already know, because quite often it is more than they realize. But as it was for me and my little Manhattan comfort zones, they can’t see yet how their islands of knowledge are connected. So… if I can provide them with one good “aha” moment, which is more or less the equivalent of walking them around the corner to see that another familiar neighborhood was there all along, then we are on our way. Connecting the dots, putting the material into a coherent structure, identifying and filling in the gaps.

Undercover Blues Band went into performance preparation. Musically, I’m pretty sure it would not be possible for me to be happier with what was happening in our rehearsals. It is a trio that is fearless, with sufficient skill to take risks. We each have many years of Guitar Craft experience, and so we share an understanding of our place within the creative process. We have known one another for a long time, so there is all the trust we need to follow when one of us has a creative insight. And we have the collective depth of experience to get ourselves out of trouble and back on track when we do go shooting off the cliff. But it was very clear to me where my personal comfort zones were on the guitar and how much I was relying on them, and my feeling was that this was music that deserved more from me.

Guitar Craft is a comprehensive approach. For instance, we don’t just practice the finger combinations required to play the handful of licks we use all the time; we practice every possible finger combination with the aim of developing an equal capacity in each. So I set out to apply this to my OST playing; connecting the dots, putting the material into a coherent structure, and identifying and filling in the gaps in my own playing.