What Is Your Ultimate Goal? Improv Mastery?

[Gary Flye]

Bringing joy to the residents of nursing homes where I jam with other amateur musicians.

[Mandobart]

I'm not a professional musician (ok I have been paid to play and I have contributed on some CD's) and I'm definitely NOT a professional music teacher. But...I would like to be able to motivate those I play with to try harder, to want to learn new things, to want to grow musically. I participate in several acoustic jams a month. Some of these are geared more to beginners. I just can't understand the players who have been at it for many years, still plodding along and struggling with basics like chord changes, basic progressions and any rhythm beyond a "tick-tock" straight up beat. They are basically permanent beginners and I don't know why. Lack of confidence? Lack of motivation? They are frustrated but unable/unwilling to learn. I'd like to be able to change that.

[jshane]

.....They are basically permanent beginners and I don't know why. Lack of confidence? Lack of motivation? They are frustrated but unable/unwilling to learn. I'd like to be able to change that.

Unfortunately, I dont think that you can. I think that it is not a lack of confidence, or understanding, or motivation. Until you can GROK that music is something you FEEL, you simply cant get past some point. A person who "gets this" can play 4 notes and be utterly amazing. A person without it can have the most excellent chops, and do difficult things with their hands.... but it will STILL sound "ticky-tocky".

I guess if it was my self-assigned job to try and change that in someone, I would sit with them, play a background progression, and demand that they play ONE TONE and ONE TONE ONLY, along with the progression... and tell them that we weren't going to stop until they made me feel something --- ideally, until they made me cry with the beauty of what they were doing.

I cant tell you how often I have been utterly moved by players at a very basic level, and equally utterly bored by very accomplished "mechanics".... and it is SOOO hard to explain why.

[bradlaird]

"Mastery" is a relative term (because it something always just out-of-reach).

If you start believing the word applies to yourself, you've started buying your own "publicity."

Consider this contrarian view: Mastery is not just out of reach. Everyone is, at all times, a master of something. Possible examples: "I am a master of playing poorly and believing the lie that this is all I am capable of." or "I have never picked up a mandolin in my life, and I am quite the accomplished master of knowing nothing of mandolin playing."

I am today the absolute master of precisely what I am. Mastery is not a positive value judgement else we would not have "masters of evil" or "master of disaster." I am, at times, the master of wasting perfectly valuable time. I think I am displaying that now. In twenty minutes I may go pour myself a second cup of coffee, pick up my mandolin and pick a little. I will then be the unchallenged and unmitigated Master of Sounding (and looking) Just Like a Guy Named Brad Laird Fooling Around With a Mandolin.

I suppose I am really saying that we are all what and where we are based mostly upon our own actions and, at any given moment, are stewing in the juices of our own past decisions and, as such, whatever behaviors and qualities we presently exhibit, we have fully mastered them.

Just food for thought. Now, where is my coffee cup?

[JeffD]

They are basically permanent beginners and I don't know why. Lack of confidence? Lack of motivation? They are frustrated but unable/unwilling to learn.

This I find real interesting.

The first time I saw that was a dulcimer club, where most of the members seemed to be as you describe. They mostly all played at the thunk thunk level, had more interest in socializing than playing music, and loved the club more than the club's purpose, it seemed. I have since come across others like this, a whole jam full actually, on fiddles and guitars mostly, who play out of their own compiled tune book and rarely go beyond it, are never seen at other jams with folks outside their group, are not too interested in music parties or festivals, don't listen much to this music during the day, but, truth be told, seem happy enough.

I have my own theory as to why - which is an unwillingness to make room for the music in their lives. Early on, music is a limited activity - something you do after work and before taking the kids here and there before dinner and once a month at the jam, where the family "lets you" do "your thing". For some it never gets to be more than this, never evolves.

For others music becomes something you listen to at work, play before and after, (and at lunch in the break room if you can), and before and after taking your kids to concerts and jams that you go to weekly, and family oriented festivals in the summer, listen to at dinner, and well just break open a music shaped hole in your life and fill it up. Life kind of shifts around and fits itself in and around your music.

Instead of music being one of the many things you do, it becomes one of the things your life is about.

I don't think it is "unable to learn", or even a "lack of confidence", it seems to me its more a lack of willingness to make room for the music. It seem almost like they are saying "Well if I get good at this, if I enjoy this too much, and that will disrupt things too much." Something like that.

Or not finding a legitimate way to be musical, as opposed to playing music.

Family dynamics (perception that music is getting away from the family and doing "my thing" as opposed to being my passion and a feature of my personality that the family incorporates), internal self image (I am not a professional musician, so how far do we really want to go with this), or I don't know what.

Anyway, its all good. As long as folks are having fun. Not everyone gets everything there is to offer in the music. Not everyone wants it all. That's fine.

[wildpikr]

Well said, JeffD.

[bradlaird]

its more a lack of willingness to make room for the music. .

Interesting post... My opinion has swung like a pendulum back and forth on this issue for a long time. The older I get, the more "teaching" experience I accrue, and the better I have become at pattern recognition I am coming to the conclusion that a person's musicality, or potential for such, is cast at birth or soon before or after by some process unknown to me.

By musicality I mean that "need to play music", that ability to "carry a tune in a bucket", that division between the "ticky-tocky" and the sublime, that "music" you feel versus that "music" you hear.

I think a cat is a cat. Pet him, call him Rover, feed him dog biscuits, tell him over and over that he is a dog, and the cat will fall for none of it. The cat is still a cat.

I think it is great for people to play music and try to learn to do it even if they recognize that they are on the other side of this mystical divide. I have had plenty of students (and friends) flat out admit that they know full well they will "never amount to squat" musically but they LIKE messing around with it. I love people like that.

In many areas of interest (tractor mechanics, gardening, flint knapping, etc.) I am one of them. I know a guy who can knap a hunk of flint into the thinnest, most perfect Dalton you have ever seen! I can break them in half with one carefully aimed, over-thought, pre-planned whack with my antler billet. I knap more to understand what a REAL knapper is all about than to delude myself that I could become one.

I have dreamed of the perfect student arriving on the scene and soaking up whatever I can toss his or her way. I have had (count 'em) two such students since 1982. Two. And, frankly, neither of them needed lessons.

[catmandu2]

I think a cat is a cat. Pet him, call him Rover, feed him dog biscuits, tell him over and over that he is a dog, and the cat will fall for none of it. The cat is still a cat.

One of my cats seems to think (and act) as much--dog

Our biological makeup is one thing--our phenomenological experience is another..

[JeffD]

Well when I first got into this it was like a hunger. I didn't have a mandolin so I borrowed my Dad's old abandoned four string banjo, tuned it in fifths, got an old beginners clarinet book, and set about learning how to play and how to read on mandolin.

When I finally lived on my own I went to as many jams a week as I could, and played with others as often as possible.

When I went to Scotland I recorded the jams and sessions on cassette during the day, and played them at night while writing the tunes out, and learned and memorized two or three new tunes every night. (No sleep for the obsessive.)

I never had lessons, and I never had even had knowingly heard a mandolin on a recording.

So by the time I was a family man, all in the family already knew what I was all about.

So I have a certain soft heart for those who are hungry for it, and a bit of a problem understanding those that aren't. (Though no problem in accepting them, accepting anyone at any level of commitment.)

I am not sure it's a matter of being born musical though. Because I am not a natural musician. Nothing comes easy or without significant work. I cobbled together a musical intuition with rusty pieces of iron and a mig welder. Nothing developed of its own.

If there is anything inherited, it is my ability to get passionate about stuff. (I engaged in the same kind of passionate obsessive behavior when I took up fishing. OMG its comical to remember.)

[catmandu2]

If there is anything inherited, it is my ability to get passionate about stuff. (I engaged in the same kind of passionate obsessive behavior when I took up fishing. OMG its comical to remember.)

Music is a nice thing for we who are often overly compelled by the sensual; after spending most of my life self-obsessed with athletic training and competition, art and music, now in my later years I'm afforded the opportunity and privilege to provide for and enlighten others.


The genetics/transmission question is interesting to ponder: the nature-nurture/cognitive-affective paradoxes are always intriguing. One thing that seems evident: in cultures that integrate music (daily custom, ritual, etc.)--typically "pre-industrial" societies--people in the community (both children and adults) are immersed. In "modern" society--we often forego or sublimate the old customs (mystery, ritual, sensuality) for the "rational." By and large, it's difficult to teach someone rhythmic feel--sensitivity: if a cat doesn't feel it, that cat will have difficulty with a form dependent upon rhythmic nuance (of course there are musical forms not predicated on rhythm). But there are methods of sensitization (meditation, psychotropics...Terrance McKenna advocated hallucinogens and T. Monk--to be used separately--as public education curriculum)

[Mark Wilson]

I think it is great for people to play music and try to learn to do it even if they recognize that they are on the other side of this mystical divide. I have had plenty of students (and friends) flat out admit that they know full well they will "never amount to squat" musically but they LIKE messing around with it. I love people like that.

In many areas of interest (tractor mechanics, gardening, flint knapping, etc.) I am one of them.

Thats an insightful way to look at it. I ask the gurus on the vintage tractor forums questions but I never intend to be one - just enjoy getting by.

[catmandu2]

Yes--process vs product. We (techno-industrial society) are obsessed with product.

[Dave Wrede]

To suck less. I generally don't measure myself by my yesterday, I measure myself by the "pros" (Dawg, etc.). By that measure I fall far (far, far) short and hope, someday to at least be able to hold my head up in such company.