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zen and the craft of guitar

Listening to:	bird choir
Reading:	1984
Weather:	31, snow showers

I saw the California Guitar Trio +2 a few months back. It was amazing. These guys met each other while studying guitar through this Robert Fripp guitar school called Guitar Craft. The performance was strictly asskicking, especially technically, and one pronounced aspect of the show was the way these guys held themselves. They were extreme examples of economy of movement, and even between tunes had an almost bizarre kinda Data/Spock appearance going on. As a guess I attributed it not to their natural personalities, though it's certainly plausible that 3 practice-room-geeked antisocial techhead players would form a mathematical funk+ band, but to their shared Fripp experience. That cat certainly creates some seriously focused sound and tunes, probably that's part of the method he teaches. It's gotta take mad discipline.

Right again, cat. Check out these Guitar Craft Monographs, some zen writings about the philosphy behind Frippteach. How about some elucidating quotes?

Some musicians will abandon their life of sounding music and adopt the contemplative life, recognising that the source of music is beyond silence, and that music emerges from within silence. Of these musicians some return, and bring the richness of silence within audible range.

Amen to that! Y'all probably how much I deeply love a musician whose notes come from the principle of conscious addition rather than needing a reminder when to lay out.

The life of craft is contradictory. The expression of silence in sound is an act of certainty, embracing ambiguity. This inevitable contradiction we accept, reconciling the contradiction by the quality of our application. Yo, Grasshopper here at your feet crassly breaking the silence, please continue.

In the world of commerce a great amount of effort is put into doing very little. In guitar playing this includes wild facial and bodily contortions while hitting an open E. A leap across the stage may be an act of craft, gracefully expressed. If so, it will be recognisable by the effortlessness of the leap.

Dig all that. Makes you want to throw a brick at your TV, doesn't it? Maybe it's just me.

Well stepping back to my non-crafty reality, Liv's off to Arizona tonight, flying by herself. Hopefully the ride to the airport won't be too ridiculous. The snow is supposed to accumulate between here and there, and also perhaps have a period of wintry mix. Ya got to hate the bloody wintry mix. Oh well, we'll leave directly after school and therefore have plenty of time before the 6p departure.

Tomorrow night beer night! Ahoooooga, I'm looking forward to it. Our gracious host Dantheman has been doing some snazzy carpentry at his crib so we'll get to see the finished projects. That's always inspiring!

Jeannie, Suzanne and I drove to Wheeling for a 12:00 meeting yesterday. When we got there, a smidge early, they said "the meeting's cancelled, didn't you get the message?" Uh, no. When did it get cancelled? About an hour ago. Well since it takes about 1.5 hours to get to Wheeling from Schmotown, I was in the cara when the message got broadcast. What the hell? Linda had a car accident. Oh shit! No, she's alright. Phew. But her transmission got nuked, she swerved to miss a deer and ran over some kind of flotsom or jetsom and tore up her undercarriage. Dang. So we had our own little brief meeting, then hey, let's go to Cabela's! I've been wanting to go, just never got the proverbial round tuit. Here's our opp. I'm hungry, let's eat lunch there and check it all out. Cool. Lunch was good, meatloaf potatoes carrots beets etc. Other options available, entirely American fare. The store itself has all these stuffed critters around, bears, deer, an elephant, lion, tiger, birds, etc. Also some giant aquariums (aquaria?) with WV native fishees and whatnot. I'm not for the dead stuff, but the fish were cool. Nice camping gear section, too, that was fun to check out. We shopped for a little less than an hour, then headed back southeast. Nice diversion.

The temp must be rising, there is meltage out in the yard, some grassy spots are emerging.

Anybody reading this got any Scofield, Joe Sample, Jeff Lorber? This is a weak area of my music collection, and I'm diggin that stuff through Napster right now. Damn DRM's. Anyhoo, burn me some if ya got some, K?

permalink posted by cat 8:20 AM

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