Monday, October 10, 2022

Companion Notes for FBMCFE, Ask Me Anything Series, Video 3

Real science is truth. Humans do not see all of it if there is a financial incentive or any other personal motives driving it.

There is human science which is the observations of the natural laws and finding causes and effects and then taking it into everyday life. There are so many examples that have benefited human life and society in all fields of life; agriculture, architecture, travel, communication and on and on.

What is this box?? If you are frozen in the current “box” of what is acceptable, you will never find your personal Art. In the video, the reality that there is always space inside of matter (and our minds), is brought up to encourage finding that space. If we are trapped inside our training, conditioned responses, habits and blindly keep acting from that programming, it will be extremely confining. The acoustics inside of our minds will govern the quality of resonance that we generate out of ourselves.

The box has many rooms! These small boxes within the box attract certain types of people. There is the sound “freaks’ the live and breath sound. There are intonation “sticklers” that can “smell” out of tune like a fine hound. There are rhythm “fanatics” that sense anything that is out of step. NOW, before anyone gets offended by what I am saying, I’m being humorous and I’d love to see an old Monty Python's Flying Circus do a rendition of all those characters! What a funny episode that would be! It’s starting to give me ideas……

My point is that we all have aptitudes and some people have a lot of natural attitudes that are very sensitive and can pick off real subtle changes. I remember Gunther Schuller having a set of ears that were the greatest I ever witnessed. I played in the Boston Pops with Buddy Rich, and his rhythmic virtuosity was a marvel for me to witness. Getting back to the “box” and all of its smaller boxes inside of it, like rhythm box, pitch box, timber box, style box, make up the current box and past boxes of the basic requirements for getting passed the first rounds of auditions and beyond. BUT, inside of those boundaries is SPACE. As they said in Star Trek, “Space, the final frontier.” Finding the space inside of a small space is part of the job of the artist. The instrument itself is a space, a box, a form in which we build a relationship with while finding the means and ways to translate life into it.. Music is a medium which can have enumerable rooms (different genres) all created from  an incredible variety of influences from nationality, ethnicity, race, religion, climate,a particular time period and even astrological.

From taking a partial look into all that, we can see how many holes we can fall into as opposed to embracing them all in a healthy organic fluid way by building a real relationship with them all and seeing how they are all parts of a whole living organism we call Art, here in the medium of music.

1. Build your own relationship with music and your instrument.

2. Find the space inside the current fashions so you don't lose yourself.

3. Let the spirit of the music govern the other smaller boxes, not the other way around.

More to come…

No comments: