So This is Not What I Had in Mind: A Sorry Finish

I'll admit that I had high hopes when I started this project.  I had visions of sitting and writing thought-provoking posts full of wit and mandolin related wisdom.  I imagined myself posting regularly, inspired by reflective practices that manifested themselves in introspective and well-articulated entries.  I mean, for crying out loud, I used the word "musings" in my title. Can it get more pretentious than that?

This Masters program has taught me more that a little about my ability to just pick up excellent management skills on the fly.  Work ethic and time management are not the same; I know I have a good work ethic, but the difference between working hard and working smart is one of which I am painfully aware.  And it's just the simple things where it falls apart.  Needing to post at least twice a week, and then not getting around to posting twice last week - Bah!  I feel like the apostle Paul when he confesses in Romans that the things he does not want to do, he does, and the things he wants to do, he does not.  There's nothing like having your cyber-record stare you in the face and laugh, "well buddy, you really made your bed this time, now enjoy lying in it for a while."

There has been one thought that has run consistently through my mind for the last seven-and-a-bit weeks, and that is that blogging just has not remained a stable/staple part of my life (since I first began in Xanga seven or eight years ago, or regularly through this project) because I've been blessed with an overwhelming amount of non-virtual relationships and social connections; the need to reach out to an online community is somewhat secondary, in my mind, to maintaining those real-time face-to-face relationships and meeting the various responsibilities that I have throughout the week.

This has the potential, of course, to suggest that I think only people "with no life" have the time to blog, but it's not what I'm trying to say.  I'm just increasingly aware that the reason I have had trouble maintaining the demands of this assignment, and have indeed failed to do so in some cases, is because I'm incredibly busy with all of the meaningful and valuable non-online aspects of my life.  Sitting at a computer for hours on end isn't even a possibility, but rather than view my battle to find time for it as a curse, I need to see it as the unfortunate problem caused by a life full of enjoyable work, many outreach opportunities in which I get to utilize my hobby and passion, and a wonderful network of family, friends, and colleagues.

I want to be better.  I want to someday actually work through all of those mandolin books, writing books, and that increasingly long short-list of books to read and review.  But I will not sacrifice my family time to do so, neither will I give up on being a part of those real life ministry moments that the band has been given. (I don't think I've mentioned that band before: swing by here if you want to know what I'm talking about.)  I've no doubt that I need to learn to manage my time better, and I need to be more strict in disciplining myself (and I need to ramble less when I write), but I need to be a part of here and now, and I cannot give up the chance to breathe hope and joy into someone's life for the sake of my own ambition.  It's been good for me to be reminded of all of this. . . but I still wish I had done a much better job of maintaining this site and being more faithful to this project.

Last week's tune was another beautiful European one.  One of the beautiful things about being part of an online learning forum is that I've been made to try and learn tunes that I wouldn't have paid much attention to otherwise.  This exposure has made me move out of the usual patterns in which I play, and re-learn how to utilize the entire range of the mandolin.

Also, last week's tune was that first that I've ever learned by reading standard notation.  Usually I just learn by ear, or read the tablature.  It's nice to know those piano lessons so many years ago are still paying off, even if there is an unhealthy amount of thinking involved.

Hope you enjoy the tune. Here is "The Lass of Patti's Mill."

Oh, and because if anything can go wrong, it probably will:

It promises to be a super-long six weeks.  You should try typing with this thing on.  Or should I say, y0u sh0upd try ty[ping with thi0s thing 0n0 ;

Blank and Panic

Today was one of those days where the panic just informs every move that I make.

You know the kind: every project that is peeking its ominous head over the not-distant-enough horizon begins to enforce its gravity on the strings of your heart; time sort of melts away from a compartmentalized calendar state to one long gray tunnel of hopeless anticipation; nothing happens because you're too busy trying to organize your attack on all that needs to happen.  Plus, like every other Wednesday this decade, it's cold and raining.

It's the blank pages that get to me, start to wear on my psyche like a slow router, locking me into a ruthless paralysis.  Part of it is because I'll never have done enough groundwork to be comfortable starting.  Surely someone who is going to say anything must have something to say, and how can I can I say what I need to if I'm so aware of how little I know?  It goes against everything I tell any of my students with regard to getting going - as in just get going. Start. Keep starting.  And in spite of myself, I just sit with blank pages waiting for me to spill onto them whatever tripe I've decided is worth spewing out with my name attached.

Then I come Starbucks. Time for some Caramel Apple Spice therapy.  (It's a drink, not a candle.)  Time to combat the gray and the rain and try to dull this panic.  And there, on the counter, is the latest from Ma, Thile, Meyer, and Duncan: The Goat Rodeo Sessions.  Released yesterday.  In my hand today.  And here I thought it was only going to be released in the U.S. Joy, oh joy.

It hit me as I put the cd on and listened as Chris Thile begins the opening "Attaboy" with an impossibly gorgeous picking pattern in some other-worldly time signature.  I'm seldom, if ever, intimidated by the blank pages of my mandolin.  I love to sit down and just spew notes from that thing, whether or not they are purely original or heavily founded on some other tune or riff.  For some reason I can stare an open space in a song and just fly right on into it, drawing on whatever I feel it demands from my particular skill set at that moment.  It's mine to try out and examine and explore, and hey, if it goes poorly, there's always the next time.  Just scrap the page and start again.

But silly me.  The endless potential of an empty break is not that different from the spankin' new word document file.  My mindset is different, and that's probably where it ends.  Sure there are some formal constraints brought to bear on the situation, instituted by either the song, text, or genre, but these are the kinds of constraints that provide a framework and foundation for any kind of coherent creativity.

I need to re-remember that as I'm not bound to the notes I set out playing on the mando, neither am I bound to those first words I toss on the sheet.  Thile, Meyer, and Duncan (Ma doesn't do any composing on Goat Rodeo) started out with nothing, and they certainly scrapped ideas as they developed the album.

The panic in my heart needs to spark my expression on paper as the same energy does when I'm pickin'. So I should quit this and get on to what I need to be doing! Panicking productively.

Stay tuned for this week's Song-of-the-Week.

Draggin Others into this Mess: A.K.A "How to Exasperate a Rhythm Player"

So, I managed to coerce my sis into playing some rhythm while I work at speeding up Fire on the Mountain.  It worked so well we actually sped up in the middle of the song.  (For those of you who aren't aware, that's not necessarily a good thing.)

This is pretty much how we both got started into this musical mess.  Only now I'm dragging her into my selfish little corner of performance improvement.

So, here's Fire on the Mountain at roughly 168 bpm.

Fire on the Mountain 1.2 - 125 bpm

And here's the first speed-it-up.

Fire on the Mountain: Painfully Slow = 96 bpm

Here's my first shot at this week's tune of the week. I'm taking some advice and forcing myself to slow it down, learn it to speed, and then take it up by increments. I completely missed out on the "C" part turnaround at the end of the B part (that's "picking" jargon for "I forgot part of the tune). I just thought that the tab I was reading had added a finishing lick for the tune.  This is what usually happens: I want to learn it so bad and get to the finished product that I hardly take the time to learn it right.  I believe I've made similar confessions.  

Even now I can see some technique that I'd like to revise, specifically in my right hand.  That wrist just needs to get more of the Del McCoury "wet dish rag" effect in it.  Loosey-goosey business.


I'm going to do my level best to shoot a new video every day to the end of the week, speeding it up as I go.  Hopefully I can even rope my sister into playing some rhythm for it on Thursday.    

I'm looking forward to speeding it up. I didn't make 96 bpm sound very musical at all.

I Don't Know (Almost) Squat = Humility (I Hope)

In a podcast lecture last year, RZIM itinerant John Dickson defined and discussed the role and power of humility, especially as it is found within the Christian context.  (He even goes so far as to argue that humility is "profoundly Christian," as historians notice a positive use of the word humilitas around the time of Christ, where before it had only been used as a negative character reference.)

While most of his discussion has stuck with me, a few points keep pressing on my mind.  Two, in particular, relate to my musings on mandolin playing and performance.  The first is that humility just makes sense.  Dickson speaks about how those who are experts on any given topic should be the first to admit that since there is so much to know about one little topic, that it's self-evident how much there is to know about every little topic. Humility, by extension, is then a reasonable response.  The more I learn about about playing the mandolin, the more I am aware of what else there is to know.  The more delve into the mandolin and the music around it, the more I become aware of new artists and styles that either exist or are emerging on the scene.

This awareness of the more and the others ties into another point Dickson makes, which is that humility is generative.  That is, a person who is truly humble is generally open to new ideas, and is willing to listen to what others have to say.  Someone who believes s/he knows all there is to know has completely closed his/her mind and heart to learning anything new, which is quite detrimental to the development of the self.

I think about this last point all the time, especially when I find myself in a jamming situation (or in general company) in which I am one of the better pickers.  It can be hard to be open to either criticism or advice, or to even listen with full attention as someone else explains a song or plays a tune in which they are interested.  I have to be very careful that I don't close myself off from what could be a very informative discussion or experience just because I am able to pick faster or more cleanly, or improvise into a solo I don't know.

The truth is, I don't know squat when comes to the wide wide world of mandolins, so I'm better off just shutting up and listening to what others have to say.

I've yet to be the source of my own knowledge.

Maiden's Prayer 1.0

And this is what this week is offering so far.  Stay tuned on my ramblings with regard to trying to arrange certain things to certain things. . . such as awesome fiddle tunes to mediocre mandolin abilities. Ugh.

Beech Spring 1.0

So this what I've been working on this week (besides the German language, rhetorical theory, autobiographical theory and research, and trying to co-front a band).  I'm hoping to do some revision work on it before the weekend, and shoot another take with some alternate keys, tunings, and positions. After all, I should take my own advice and enjoy the process of examining the nuances of this beautiful tune.

Go Play in the Corner(s)

I should go see a doctor: I think I'm starting to actually reflect on my life.

This mandocentric blog just might actually, as I hoped, lead me into some obscure-yet-useful revelations about myself.  The one that I'm thinking about in particular is my tendency to want to storm through any project just to get to the end as quickly as possible.  That might not be the best way to describe it, as I do actually enjoy the process of learning, but my point is that I'm prone to fall into a pattern of action that I trust to be an effective and efficient paradigm for achieving a finished product.

No aspect of my life is immune to this particular defect, but it's my tendency to approach the mandolin in this way that has me thinking about my habit.  For now I'll refer to this habit/tendency as "pattern playing."

Right now I'm working on a little tune called "Beech Spring," which I've picked up from the fine folks at Mandolincafe.  The whole point is to learn the tune in a week, before moving on to a new one.  My tendency as a mandolin player is to pick up the general gist of a tune, and then resort to my standard picking/playing/position patterns on the mandolin.  I tend to settle myself into a familiar chord position and work out the tune as quickly as I can within that picking "paradigm."  For me, this usually manifests itself in a closed position, as I can easily switch keys (or more applicably, pick up a lead on the fly).  The upshot of this is that a lot of my breaks end up sounding familiar - not in a personal style way, but in a way that suggests a lack of innovation or intentional investigation of the tune itself.

My attempt to learn a tune a week has brought this tendency to the surface, as I've forced myself to listen to every essential note in the song.  I have to ask myself, "what is it about this tune that sets it apart from others?" and then be sure to emphasize, exploit, and examine those nuances within the tune itself.  It's revolutionizing the way I approach my mandolin neck, and forcing me to hone my listening skills.

Of course, as with most things, I recognize this tendency elsewhere in my life.  I research and do essays this way, resorting to a comfortable methodology that doesn't fully examine the particular nuances of each topic or project format.  I communicate with people within a rather fixed communication framework because I want to be sure that I understand what is going on and don't have to wade through an unfamiliar relationship model.  I want Christmas lists so that I don't have to guess at what people want, or worse, actually work to understand their character/heart and demonstrate my love accordingly.  I want to get it done, not play around in the corners.

Of course, as I'm learning, it's the playing around in the corners that leads to some pretty beautiful music.

Just Putting it Out There

This is when I know I've gotten myself in too deep:

Waiting

I think of myself as a patient person.  I can usually put up with a considerable amount of BS before I blow a fuse on anyone or anything.  (That is, of course, excepting the "free-zone" that happens between the time I get behind the wheel of my car and have to share the road with every brain-dead idiotic sharp-as-a-sack-of-wet-mush driver in North America - who for some reason need to be travelling the same direction as me, albeit ten km/h slower, swerving; thank goodness for those virtueless free zones.)

The down side of this is that I'm a bit patient with the creative process, consistently waiting for the creative spark to hit before I commit myself to action.  This delay is in direct opposition to what I know to be best practices when it comes to composition and artistic expression.  As a tutor, "writing to learn" is a phrase I'm  familiar with, and one which I know to be based on sound principle (thanks to few times I've actually engaged in what could be deemed a writing to learn process).

It's very much the problem with this blog, as I wait for a dash of inspiration to hit. (Still waiting, if you can't tell.)  I really need to force myself to sit down and write every night, even if it means being dull about it.  I've had good intentions.  Heck, I've been paving roads with them ever since this little project started.  Hopefully (and this is where it gets good), tonight can be the start of the implementation of those good intentions.

The thought process that sparked this reflection earlier today actually centred on how this "patience" of mine really does retard a lot of action in which I'd like to be engaged.  I want to be a better mandolin player, yet I don't take 5 minutes a day to play, because I'd rather take 30 minutes.  I want to be a better student, but I don't take the time to read half an article because I'm waiting for the time to read the entire thing.  I'd like to be a better writer, but I don't sit down to write for ten minutes because I'd like to take the time to write the epic that I'm sure is gloriously fermenting away in the annals of my subconscious.  I think you get the point.

This weekend our band opened for a band that included a 79 year-old mandolin player who had some great chops.  I'm sure he didn't sit around waiting for the perfect opportunity to practice, just like I'm sure Thile, McCoury, Skaggs, and Grisman didn't/don't sit around waiting for the perfect opportunity to sit and practice for a preferred length of time.

Just as life is best lived in the present, mandolin playing, writing, studying, are all best done in the time in which one has to do them, which is probably right now.