Please use a discerning gaze when reading these claims, which deserve critical examination. This documentation represents a snapshot of my internal landscape at a certain point in time in my life during my collegiate career.

Original Entry:

On Gravity in Sound

Similarly to how Pulse is a center of gravity, so too are all chords their own universes with their own gravitational centers. Chord tones are like stars and planets, with massive gravity and a tendency towards grounding the more ethereal and weaker tones. Of course, one must tune into chord tones of all qualities; to hear and feel them through all changes – subtle and magnificent – is to stay grounded within the natural relativity of sonic landscapes.

It becomes a game. How do these massive points of density interplay and shift? Where does the tension grow? Where does it break?

Arpeggios and chord tones are the world against which all music dances and through which all music breathes.

Current Reflections:

Last week, we considered the gravity that exists within rhythm; this week, it looks like my past-self decided to focus on the gravity that exists within harmony.

If I’m being honest, in my initial re-read of this entry, the language makes me cringe a little. I can see that my spirit was full of fire and my intention was strong, but I’m not sure that I would say this the same way now.

How might I say this now, you ask?

Well, if you aren’t asking, I certainly am.

As I consider this question, I find myself gazing towards my personal relationship with harmony; I think that I left something crucial out of my initial considerations, all those years ago. I completely neglected the importance of melody when considering the musical universe of harmony.

If my memory serves me, I remember encountering several critical and life-changing perspectives about harmony from my jazz and history studies at the University of Toledo. This wisdom was transmitted to me, perhaps during my studio lessons with my professor, Jay Rinsen Weik, or maybe in a composition lesson with the gifted Dr. Lee Heritage – both professors heavily altered the course of my thinking about composition. It may be so that each told me the same thing in different moments, or even that these nuggets of wisdom arose from somewhere else in the fertile environment of UT’s music department. Wherever it came from, what I learned was this:

1. Chords, in and of themselves, in a certain way, are inert. This means that in isolation, chords don’t necessarily lead anywhere or have much to say without a relationship to melody or larger context. (This one definitely traces back to Dr. Heritage. Forgive me if I have misrepresented your words, sir.)
2. The great guitarist, Jim Hall, had a fascinating concept of harmony: rather than conceptualizing chords as blocks or stacks of notes, Jim Hall preferred to conceptualize harmony as the intersection of different melodic lines, each with their own integrity and direction.

Could I site the information for this second claim? God I wish. I’m going to have to dig around on the internet and in my notes to see if I can trace the source.

In the meantime, lets look at each point, one at a time.

1. Chords are fundamentally inert.

In many ways, this was a point of contention for me when Dr. Heritage first asserted that chords were basically meaningless on their own. I was studying in the jazz world, and there was a blatant worship of chords and chord changes. Every one was talking about the changes, how the chords were built, what the good notes were, what notes to avoid. This worship of chord changes largely informed my original entry. It was easy for me to get lost in the infinite soundscapes of harmonic drones, exploring tensions and consonances in sound. Droning harmony was and still remains a favorite experimental setting for me to explore the nature of sounds on the guitar. It was from this deep communal regard of chords in the UT Jazz department and through my direct experience of mining sounds out of drones that I began to conceptualize the celestial perspective of harmony that is so apparent in the original entry.

I don’t think chords are meaningless on their own. I don’t think they are inert, frozen, dead, and without motion. I know this, both in my own experience and because droning tones are foundational for the ancient and improvisational Hindustani music.

(Further reading on drones here and here)

But I think what Dr. Heritage was trying to convey was closer to the second point on the list.

Without context, a chord is just a block of sound.

When I use a chord or some stack of harmony as a drone, I am using the harmonic and looping sound as context to explore melodic improvisation against that sound.

So perhaps Dr. Heritage and I agree more than I initially thought. Context is important for harmony to convey meaning.

But you could also argue that people have the capacity to give meaning to anything. If I want to play the same chord over and over again, asserting my musicality, who’s to argue?

Philosophy aside, I think that Dr. Heritage was trying to underscore the importance of melody. Now that I’ve been stewing in this conversation for awhile, I can remember him talking about harmony as the intersection of different melodic lines.

2. Harmony as the intersection of melody

When two singers are singing different melodic lines, there are moments when their voices might sustain and overlap on different notes. The relationship between these different notes create a resonance, a musical interval, a little pocket of harmony.

How interesting.

Melody is often the animating force for musical expression. We love when the chorus hits on the radio, little fragments of songs often get stuck in our heads, playing endlessly – ear worms – and I think that most people have heard a melody that they love so much that they can’t resist singing along in the shower.

What if harmony is a musical phenomenon that occurs when multiple melodies intersect?

God, there is so much I could say about this topic.

What I will share is this: By shifting my understanding about harmony, I have enabled myself to encounter new musical possibilities in my own composition process. Music doesn’t have to be constrained to “theoretically perfect” grids and charts, using the “correct” harmonic voicings and adhering to all the “rules.”

Often when I write now, I think primarily about the melodic integrity of what I am playing or singing:

Does it catch my heart? Does it make me feel?

How can I use the ideas within the melody as a springboard for the rest of the composition?

Can I play a countermelody on the guitar/my instrument at the same time?

Or maybe I could harmonize a line that I am playing on my guitar with the melody I’m singing, using the rhythmic contour of my vocal line as inspiration for my guitar/accompaniment.

Can I make little melodic lines pop out above, below, around, and through the chords I am playing?

Can I make satisfying decisions about voice leading, considering each note in my chord as a separate melody line; each saying something meaningful, each pointing somewhere?

And yes. At the same time, all of my exploration with drones, experimentation with tensions and consonances, and the celestial regard for harmony that I wrote about about in the original entry – ALL of it informs my current process. For me, this is a process driven by the pure love of harmonic exploration, except now it is better informed by the singing heart of melodic intelligence and the driving force of rhythm.

How do you conceptualize harmony? I’d love to hear about your perspective. Do you agree with these perspectives? Disagree? Have information contrary to what I’ve shared here? I would love to hear from you. Drop a comment and let me know how you receive this entry!

Love and Bows

_/\_

Sam

Kogen

Please use a discerning gaze when reading these claims, which deserve critical examination. This documentation represents a snapshot of my internal landscape at a certain point in time in my life during my collegiate career.

Original Entry:

On Rhythm… On Pulse

Rhythm and pulse are centers of gravity in sound. Not only do keys have centers, but so too does pulse.

As I play, I tap on 2 and 4 and engage with the feeling of pulse. As my mind sorts and integrates new information, the energy of my awareness shifts to enable my arms and hands to activate and maintain a pattern; when this happens, my awareness sometimes looses hold of my pulse on 2 and 4, and my imagination slides around outside of a feeling of time, causing me to oftentimes drop my entire act.

This is the moment to become more deeply aware of. When do I drop the whole show and loose track of the ground, the beat? What techniques or feels scramble my mind? These are the moments to realize.

All feelings are relative to a center; where I loose my center is where I work to move more deeply into it, to compensate for hectic changes.

If I continually drop my performance in one spot, this becomes the spot to thread a steady pulse that I can feel with my body.

I am aware of the feeling of my body. I harmonize with center through the feeling of pulse. My foot tends to feel pulse on 2 and 4. My arms, hands, and fingers feel vibrations emanating off of my guitar. I am my ability to harmonize multiple dimensions of feeling around a single unshakable center. My hands and fingers harmonize their rhythm with the pulse of my body, of my feet. I am my ability to smoothly drift through changes while maintaining a solid living root of pulse in my awareness.

Current Reflections:

It’s fascinating to see the language of my mental operating system out of this era of my life. I was really taken with this “I am my ability to…” phrase, like it had some sort of super power. It was a phrase my friend Ryan Murray arrived with at festival when Mark England walked him through a process of examining his language and personal stories. I watched Ryan suddenly become empowered with his words in that moment, and rather than fully appreciating the process that brought him to this personal phrase, I just grabbed the phrase, believing it to be the magic fruit that could help me do anything.

Although I employed this phrase frequently, I’m not sure that it had the intrinsic power that I hoped for.

Do any of you notice features of your language and how it seems to change over time? If so, I’d love to hear about your perspective on your own linguistic process!

Beyond these initial observations of language, this entry is an interesting one. You may know that, Western music especially (as in Western Hemisphere) tends to use tonal or key centers. But at the time of this writing, I was realizing that the beat or pulse of music can also act as a center of gravity.

Here I am talking about “tapping on 2 and 4.” Just in case you don’t know, I’m talking about tapping my foot along with a metronome. Instead of tapping out every beat, I was actively practicing tapping my foot ONLY on beats 2 and 4.

Why? Why would you do such a thing?

This was one of the first and hardest lessons I learned at the University of Toledo in the Jazz department during my 2012 incarnation as a Saxophone Major. My Teacher at the time insisted that I “CUT THAT SHIT OUT,” (talking about me tapping my foot every beat) and “TAP THE 2 AND THE 4.”

I had no idea what the fuck that meant. Though I was quickly and harshly informed that beat 2 and beat 4 were typically the beats that the drummer would pump the high hat with their foot in many styles of traditional jazz.

So, I realized I was going to have to become my own drummer – at least in some capacity.

I smashed my head against the wall with this one for the entire semester. It took five months of continual (and painstaking) practice before this started to become even close to second nature.

Then I dropped out of school and forgot largely forgot about it.

After a year of shenanigans, I gathered up myself and reapplied to the University of Toledo, now incarnating as a guitar player (This had been my original intention back in 2012, although I accidentally auditioned on Saxophone, thinking I was just trying out for the big band or something, ending up lumped in with the other saxophone majors.)

During my year away, I had taken it upon myself to drill all my major scales and basic major and minor triads. Theoretically, I felt ready to hang, but as a player, I knew I had a LOT of mechanical work to do.

But you know what I didn’t need to do?

Kill myself to understanding tapping on 2 and 4. Turns out that shit was slowly aging like a fine wine in the cellar of my consciousness while I partied for a year. It happened to be so that I could tap 2 and 4 pretty effortlessly now.

This entry is interesting because I was noticing that, even though I had a pretty solid command of tapping beats 2 and 4, there were still moments in some tunes where I would completely lose the beat or turn myself around. The easiest place to do this for me was during an improvised solo. I always wanted to do the best I could (maybe trying to one-up my friends and peers), but usually I just ended up farting and fumbling around, loosing track of the beat and the form.

It was like: “Solo time? AHHHH!” *Screaming and spontaneous fires, people running in utter mayhem*

My most basic thought was embarrassing: “DO THE THING!” I’d scream to myself, watching my hands open and close like clamps in a claw machine.

Oh yeah.

All of my training went right out the window in panic and I’d just bang on the strings, using wide vibratos and bends when I ALWAYS landed on a b9, #9, b3, b6, or b7 on a major 7 chord (These happen to be among the WORST sounding unintentional tones a person could accidentally resolve to).

Eventually I became aware that it was perhaps, not a wonderful idea to panic and vomit every time I soloed.

Then, a friend, mentor, and wonderful teacher of mine, Mike Cantafio then taught me a way to take my foot tapping to the next level.

“On your left foot, keep tapping 2 and 4, but with your right foot, tap every beat 1, 2, 3, and 4. A teacher taught me this, then I applied it to EVERYTHING, and It’s CRAZY dude, it will help your time SO much. I can tell when drummers are dragging or rushing now. It’ll change your world!”

Bows Mike. That shit fucked up my mind and put me back on square one. It was hard.

Really. Fucking. Hard.

But I kept practicing. This exercise took YEARS before it began to feel natural, but guess what, it clicked together, even for a person as dense as myself.

This new approach to rhythm has changed my life.

It didn’t solve everything, but suddenly, I had much deeper and more stable roots to rely on when site-reading, playing melodies, and improvising solos.

After that, I started to wonder if I could root my rhythm more deeply, using my voice as another anchor point for rhythm.

I started counting the beats “1, 2, 3, 4” out loud. Easy, right? Sure, if you are playing quarter notes or maybe 8th notes. But how about syncopation? Triplets? 16th note syncopation? Quintuplets?

This is the cutting edge of my practice now, keeping my feet tapping and locked onto the beat, counting any subdivision that I choose, and creating musical phrases that have a beginning, middle, and end. Where do I lose the beat now? What moments overload my rhythmic center of gravity and cause me to drift through time?

And you know, maybe that’s not necessarily a bad thing. What if I could use this mistake, drifting through time, and harvest the result of it while still maintaining my grounded gravity of pulse? That sounds like freedom.

Bows

_/\_

Sam

Kogen

Please use a discerning gaze when reading these claims, which deserve critical examination. This documentation represents a snapshot of my internal landscape at a certain point in time in my life during my collegiate career.

Original Entry:

Too Radical of a Change

I noticed today when practicing material – licks that I can hit and nail at half note = 50, I step in gaping holes wen I immediately attempt it at half note = 70.

This is not, by any means, a new trend. Often I use too radical of a change to express myself; sometimes it’s perfect, but in other situations, it may overwhelm other more subtle energies and shut them down. Not every moment calls for a jarring shift; it would be extremely rude to wake one’s lover from a gentle sleep with a screaming guitar solo.

There exists infinitely subtle energies and dimensions of reality that are dismissed by blundering awareness. I am my ability to tune into these layers of increasing subtlety.

Because I am my ability to tune into the infinitely subtle aspects of reality, I guide my creativity to gently shift and unfold with the natural potential of the universe, introducing massive shifts almost beyond perception.

Current Reflections:

When I first wrote this entry, I was noticing a tendency in my practice of the guitar; I was always gunning for the goal, trying to GO GO GO and GET THE RESULT. I would learn how to play a melody or a line at a fairly pedestrian and accessible speed, and then, I would ratchet up the tempo to THE GOAL TEMPO, which was AS FAST AS I COULD PLAY IT.

Instead of starting with the reality of my current ability level, acknowledging my capacity, working on the edge of my ability to consistently and evenly, building up a foundation that could support my intention, and gradually crushing my goal with tectonic and unshakable force, I instead wanted my results NOW.

I can do it at this slow speed. NOW LET’S BUMP THAT SHIT UP.

It was like I was confidently curling 2 pound weights without a problem, so I decided I was ready for 40 pounds. And I expected that I could probably keep doing 3 or 4 sets of 15 reps each. What could go wrong?

Turns out that adding 38 pounds is pretty heavy if you aren’t used to it.

And based on the false expectation that I was going to be able to perform flawlessly with this new weight, I created quite a bit of suffering for myself.

Because I couldn’t do what I expected. It was way harder than I thought. I messed up and dropped it. And then I would beat myself up for being such a schmo.

“I’m such a failure, I can’t even lift these 40 pound weights 60 times in 5 minutes. I mean, I’ve been practicing with 2 pounds.”

A recipe for a bad time.

Recently I’ve been reading a wonderful book by the author James Clear, called Atomic Habits. The whole premise of the book is built around the idea that small, atom sized shifts in our daily lives can lead to compounding results. I’ve read it through once and I am reading it again, almost like a devotional. It fires me up to touch the inspiration daily – it’s a protein-packed reminder that I can empower myself, set practices in motion that I deeply value, and track and maintain my progress. It’s a wonderful book, and if you are interested in how we, as people, learn, grow, and evolve, I’d recommend it 100 times over.

Small incremental shifts.

It turns out, these little shifts can make a HUGE difference.

This is something I’ve found out of my direct experience of practicing music. Maybe jumping from 50 to 100 on the metronome is hard (especially if you are feeling the beat in cut time or on 2 + 4), but it turns out that crossing the gap between 50 to 100 in small increments doesn’t necessarily have to take forever.

Just as long as we can have some basic information clear, the metronome becomes a powerful tool to deepen, strengthen, stretch, and integrate our experience. It allows us to dig in and increase in manageable chunks without loosing the integrity of what we are doing.

Small incremental shifts. Build on what you have.

There is a wonderful Bill Evans Quote that my teacher had posted in his studio, and that I now have posted in my own studio:

“It’s better to do something simple which is real. It’s something you can build on because you know what you’re doing. Whereas, if you try to approximate something very advanced and you don’t know what you’re doing, you can’t build on it.“

“They’re trying to do a thing in a way that is so general they can’t possibly build on that. If they build on that, they’re building on top of confusion and vagueness and they can’t possibly progress. If you try to approximate something that is very advanced and don’t know what you’re doing, you can’t advance.”

https://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2016/05/the-creative-process.html

I couldn’t have said it better Bill. Thank you for your wisdom.

For me, at a certain point in my life, I began to recognize that I was barreling through my days, numb to many of the sensations in my body and perceptions of the world. I found myself needing to slow down, wanting to take the time to notice the little things around me that I had been previously taking for granted: The textures in the bark of trees, the smells of plants and how they subtly changed during the heat of a summer’s day versus the cool of night, the way that sounds seemed to play across my eardrums…

I began to wonder “What is the limit of my perception?” and “How deeply can I notice or feel into this moment?” or “What is the most subtle information my senses can register?”

Is there something I am missing by tuning out and zipping from activity to activity, bouncing from pleasure to pleasure, and recoiling away from the pain and discomfort of existence?

When I remember this era of my life, of noticing the reality around and within me, it charges me up and excites me. These questions are still very much alive for me today, if only I take the time to cultivate and notice them.

How do musicians and artists encode emotions into their artwork? How do they take their feelings and pour them into a medium? How is it that I can feel them? How can I pour this feeling into my own art? What is really happening in that process? Am I really taking the time to savor and appreciate the life around me as it happens?

Recently for me, the answer to this last question has sadly been no.

Maybe more than ever before, I find myself compulsively bouncing from task to task, always trying to either GO GO GO, or when a lull happens, trying to tune out and avoid the junk that I’m feeling.

Let’s face it, right now, the world is a painful place. Quarantine and Covid has been hard on everyone, and it seems to be stretching on infinitely.

It can be painful to stop and notice sometimes.

But I don’t think that is a good reason to avoid stopping or slowing down.

How do we meet the circumstances of the moment unfolding before us? And how do we meet it well?

Bows

_/\_

Sam

Kogen

Please use a discerning gaze when reading these claims, which deserve critical examination. This documentation represents a snapshot of my internal landscape at a certain point in time in my life during my collegiate career.

Original Entry:

Shift in Dynamics:

My tendency is to worship exercises with the broad intention to get better. Now I realize I may shift the paradigm.

I observe my “weakness.” I generate an intention to strengthen these “weaknesses.” I apply an exercise as medicine, with intent to heal the sore spots; then, I allow time to process and heal.

Current Reflections:

A little misleading, this one. If you were expecting an exploration of “dynamics” within this entry, which in a musical sense would pertain to a sensitivity to volume when playing, then your assumption would be well informed. But for this entry, I was thinking about “dynamics,” not as in volume, but “dynamics,” as in, “What characterizes the dynamic of this specific relationship I have with my musical process? Or, “With what qualities am I relating to my process of music?”

For me, especially during the time that this entry was written, I was starting to recognize a generalized feeling inside of me – this feeling was one that intensely motivated me to practice with a furious vigor – I wanted to “get better.”

I mentioned in a previous entry how handicapped I felt throughout my undergrad education. I was always trying to catch up. I never felt qualified to make a statement, perform, or share my music, because, “my word, I hardly know what I am doing right now!”

As I went through my daily life in college, I would do my best to take care of all of the responsibilities handed to me, from an academic standpoint. This was my baseline. Beyond the bare minimum of marginal success within the school structure, I was always searching for the edges in my ability as a musician. Whenever I would meet for ensemble practice, lessons, or listening/performance lab, I would try to give my full attention to what was happening before me.

“Do I understand this?”

“What do I notice?”

“What is this person showing me within their performance, where are they at?”

“Is this something I could do, if I was asked?”

This internal running dialogue was present with me constantly, for better or worse. In a certain way, it created an immense amount of suffering, because I was constantly comparing myself to my peers and recognizing my perceived “lack” of ability.

In another light, this constant probing lead me to push myself harder and harder – I wanted to break my boundaries and limitations, I wanted to taste the freedom of crashing through impossibilities, I wanted to “BREAK ON THROUGH TO THE OTHER SIDE!”

And man, let me tell you, when breakthroughs happen, it’s SO dang sweet. (SO dang sweet)

But my god, there is certainly a lot of head-bonking when a person is put into a pressure cooker and constantly trying to break through their own barriers.

The result of this constant impulse to grow and push lead me to a place where I would encounter difficulty and my immediately response was “How do I get better? I need to get better. I will get better. It’s time to get better.”

I would sit down, and my god, I was going to do it. I was going to get better. In retrospect, this lead to quite a bit of unguided and wasted effort, because I actually had no idea what I was trying to do. I just had a vague sense that I needed to do something to close the discrepancy between what I knew was possible for me in relation to where I currently was.

Now don’t get me wrong. Out of this ruthless fire of trial and error, I discovered some effective ways to achieve certain results, as well as some quite peculiar ways to shift my perception of time* (but more on that later). But it also lead to exhaustion, hopelessness, and at least once, the reality that I was NOT cut out for music and should quit. (Thankfully my teacher met me with an astounding sense of compassion and gentleness, and I decided I would keep giving it a GO.)

So, this particular journal entry marks one of the first moments that I began to develop an awareness of this drama I was living out.

“Holy shit, I recognize that when things inspire me, my first impulse is to push as hard as I can on the concept of getting better.

“What if instead of just stomping on the accelerator, alternatively I took stock of where I am, what I am working on, and where I am missing the mark? Maybe I could stop wasting energy and begin to heal specific illnesses and difficulties in my playing?”

Of course, like many ideas, I thought this one was great. So I wrote it down, tried it for a few days, then got overwhelmed and mostly forgot about it. Then I would fall back into the same old drama: get inspired, feel insignificant, push, push, push, inevitably break, then remember “Oh wait, I think I’ve been here before? (Question mark?)

Spirals dude. Spirals.

If I’m being honest, I still fall into the same dramas to this day.

So really, this is refreshing, encountering this post. What a good reminder. It can be helpful to pause, take stock, think about what’s really going on, recall the steps that have lead to this moment, and to hone in on the particulars of the specific edge that I am encountering. It’s easy to keep pushing and pushing and pushing with good intent, but my word, this can actually be harmful. Perhaps its important to recall the importance of stopping and noticing what’s actually happening too.

Bows

_/\_

Sam

Kogen

Please use a discerning gaze when reading these claims, which deserve critical examination. This documentation represents a snapshot of my internal landscape at a certain point in time in my life during my collegiate career.

Original Entry:

Baskets of Practice:

There are multiple ways to approach practice. I have just discovered composition, applying the techniques I have learned into active and interactive play.

Craft practice is the space and time to familiarize with the subtleties of guitar. This is the place to mess up. Hard. Flounder. Miss it. Let it suck. Just notice. This isn’t perfection in a blink, this is rewiring my natural tendencies.

Cognitive practice stretches my conceptual understanding of music and is the time to explore the connections ripe within any musical ideas, this includes reading new material.

Forgetting.

Current Reflections:

I had to go back and double check all the journal titles I’ve used so far to make sure I wasn’t repeating myself with this entry, “Baskets of Practice.” This is something I’ve thought about so much and written in so many notebooks, I was half-convinced that I had already written about it – and you know, if I have before, I’m sure that this entry won’t be the last.

This way of relating to my musical practice is another gift from my teacher, Jay Rinsen Weik, and is something that I rely heavily upon in my own teaching and practice (even if my students don’t realize it).

The basic idea is this: it is possible to know the guitar, or music at large through different lenses. Although all of the lenses are inter-related, each lens provides a unique perspective into the universe of music.

When I first encountered the idea of “baskets” in music, it was in a conversation Rinsen titled “The Five Baskets of Knowing (On Guitar),“ which I dutifully scribbled down in my notebook.

And if my memory serves me off hand,(come on transient memory, let’s get it!) these were the baskets that he presented to me:

• Notes as Letters
• Notes as Numbers (relative to scale degrees)
• Notes as pure sound
• Intervals
• Shape

I thought that this way of looking at Guitar, (which for me at the time, I was doing quite frequently and intensely) was absolutely brilliant.

Sure, I was aware of Shape on the guitar, that Basket of Knowing was probably the most familiar to me.

You know, because chords have different, like, shapes. For an instance, a G chord, cowboy style, its like a, a, well, I guess a big triangle? And C? That’s kinda like a staircase missing a stair, and then F Major 7? That ones is a STRAIGHT up staircase. And D major definitely has some MAJOR triangle vibes going on with it. D7 is like an INVERTED D major with triangular vibration. I guess A major is just like a block.

Scales have shapes, chords have shapes, arpeggios have shapes, the guitar can be a very visual instrument, especially when you first pick it up

Eherm.

All of my personal perceptions aside, the guitar basically presents like a gigantic graph, and people (myself included) tend to easily chart shapes of their own description onto the grid. In my opinion, it’s probably the most logical or natural way to start trying to understand the strange and infinite universe of THE GUITAR.

And in this particular lesson with Rinsen, I suddenly became aware of 4 new and distinctly different ways of conceptualizing and engaging with the guitar. A lot of the work I found myself doing in college involved getting to know the terrain of the guitar through some of these different lenses, or baskets.

Where do all the notes actually live on each string? How do the notes translate to numbers and scale degrees related to the major scale? What about the distance between notes? What does it actually sound like? Can you describe it and see it in all keys? Then, how do the baskets start to superimpose/relate to each other?

Whoa whoa whoa there cowboy, you are losing me.

It’s strange looking back now, having deeply investigated these five different ways of knowing. More than anything, I realize that I still have TONS to learn. But if someone is to pick up the study of guitar, (or music in general) in earnest, these different baskets of knowing can start to grow stable roots and can begin to inform the decisions a person makes when writing a song, taking a solo, or jamming around.

At school, I think my biggest wake up call came in the form of the following message: How can you be surgically intentional about what you play? How can we use our different ways of seeing and knowing, and how can we apply it intentionally rather than accidentally?

Of course, this doesn’t mean a player should be swimming in charts and graphs in their mind, thinking about every specific note they want to play and calculating or thinking about the right thing to play. Rather, how can we use everything we know to speak freely, to move fluidly through our baskets of perception, and to contribute something meaningful to the moment?

Are you still here?

For me, this was my first introduction into “baskets” of practice. Perhaps you can tell, but I was quite taken with the idea.

How interesting. We can investigate reality through different distinct lenses to help ourselves see things in new ways.

Rinsen had presented me with “The Five Baskets of Knowing on Guitar,” so I decided to look for ways to parse my musical practice out into different “baskets” or lenses.

SAM’S BASKETS OF PRACTICE FROM SOMETIME IN COLLEGE

Composition:

In this entry, for the first time, I was recognizing that I could use musical composition as a way to practice, apply, and integrate new information. A new composition can act as a vessel with which to explore new concepts and sounds – we can create a container for ourselves to play within.

Craft:

Another pillar offered by my teacher, craft practice involved studying the mechanics of the instrument, studying the techniques, and developing the ability to maneuver through musical space on the guitar. This includes Scales, Arpeggios, Notes on the Ax, cells, and shells. (I’m sure there are plenty of other craft-worthy pursuits that I haven’t mentioned.)

Cognitive:

Conceptually, how can the musical universe be mapped out? What are the 12 major keys? How about conceptualized as 7 flat keys, 7 sharp keys, and C major? That gives us 15 keys. How about the relative minor keys for each of the major keys? That would give us 30 different keys (Thanks @Victor Wooten) What is the circle of fourths? Fifths? How do the 12 different tones stack out in minor 3rds? Whole tones? What is a major 6th? What does that sound like in all keys?

These questions can start to help us build a map of the musical universe. They can help us navigate and respond to different musical moments that we encounter, giving us the gift of options, rather than keeping us limited to guesswork and shapes alone.

Forgetting:

My goodness, please forgive me, I just had my Covid Vaccine today and I’ve quite forgotten where I was going with this one.

Bows

_/\_

Sam

Kogen

Please use a discerning gaze when reading these claims, which deserve critical examination. This documentation represents a snapshot of my internal landscape at a certain point in time in my life during my collegiate career.

Original Entry:

Exploration of Circumstance:

Cats back in time didn’t attend music school to learn jazz. Cats used to roam and work. And work and Play.

I have a beautiful opportunity to receive an education, and I am misdirecting my attention, aiming to achieve, playing to achieve, not playing to play.

I consciously now choose to transform my drive to “achieve” scholastically into a drive to explore musicality as deeply as possible.

All of the tools are present. I can improvise, I just have a small amount of experience actively thinking, performing, and expressing as an improvisor over standard jazz repertoire.

Now is my chance to explore simple ideas with the vocabulary I know and to apply them with focused intent.

Current Reflections:

This one takes me back. God, music school is such a blessing and a curse. The theme in this journal entry is repeated often in lots of my notebooks from my college career – how can a person resolve to maintain their creativity, their heart, and their spark in the factory-like environment of academic jazz?

For me, it was never true that I wanted to or needed to specifically learn how to play Jazz. I loved the guitar and was kind of at a loss trying to figure things out on my own. It definitely didn’t cross my mind that I could take private lessons with a teacher outside of a university, so I assumed my only option was to take myself to college. When I got to UT, I was presented with two option: Classical Guitar, or Jazz.

Hmm, well Classical was nice but seemed a little too stiff to me. I guess that meant I was going to study jazz.

When I got to school, I had some basic facility and coordination. I knew my cowboy chords, I had a few nice Major and Minor 7 voicings, a melody or two (Autumn Leaves, which I auditioned with), and some basic arpeggio awareness, (though I couldn’t have articulated much about what I was doing), and off course a good ol’ single position minor pentatonic/blues scale.

I stumbled through a (likely) sub-par audition and was graciously admitted to the University of Toledo Jazz Department as a guitar player.

For me, I felt like I was severely handicapped for every year of my career spent in music school. I felt like I had to work 8 times as hard to understand basic concepts that some of my peers and contemporaries had been jamming with for years.

Throughout all of college, through both my junior and senior recital, I felt like an imposter. I was much more content to try and get my basic physical coordination together on the guitar than I ever was to learn repertoire. Repertoire felt like something I was never ready for.

How could I learn repertoire if I don’t know the basic mechanics of the instrument?

I spun in circles trying to understand Triads, 7th chords, notes on the ax (fretboard), scales, and cells. And my god, you can play each of those different forms in nearly infinite permutations. Triads live on 3 string sets, that’s 4 sets of 3, or Bass, Tenor, Alto, and Soprano string sets. There are 3 inversions of each triad, that’s 12 different shapes for a single chord. And there are Major, Minor, and Diminished triads, at the bare minimum. That is 12 Shapes times 3 different qualities, or 36 shapes for the 3 basic qualities of C. So we have 36 different shapes to learn for C major, C minor, and C diminished. And there are 12 keys (at a minimum), which gives us 36 shapes for each root times 12, giving us 432 different shapes and positions to play if we want to know all the basic triad forms in all keys for Major, Minor, and Diminished. And this is just ONE way to look at triads, because they can be constructed in different directions and ways across the guitar.

We haven’t even touched scales.

The volume of information was so vast, the demand so high, the sense of development so imperceptible, that after four years, I found myself asking, “What the fuck am I even doing?”

Forget musicality, I don’t even fully understand how this fucking instrument works. I can move “up” in how many ways? I can play arpeggios how many ways? I need to be able to do what to pass my sophomore scale barrier?

Dude, I faked the SHIT out of that. If they were to call a random scale in a random position, I would have been FUCKED.

Information overload.

Achieve.

Attain.

Pass.

Regurgitate.

Perform.

It made me feel sick. And I hated it. I couldn’t even remember why I was playing the damn thing.

Eventually I got to a place of anger. I was going to do it because “Fuck all of you, I’ll show you,”

which in reality was a miserable failure. I felt like a miserable failure. I couldn’t remember changes because I didn’t know which voicing were best to use. Do I use drop 2’s? Drop 3’s? Shell voicings? Which way was best for me, a beginner? But guitarist Peter Bernstein says that the root position Major 7 Drop 2 sound like crap, so he recommends just grabbing the chord tones you really like. And Be careful when you are playing with a piano player, you want to fit together like a puzzle. Don’t step on the piano players toes. And say something meaningful for your solo. Jesus. It’s so flat.

I hated it. I was never good enough. How was I supposed to integrate nearly 100 years of musical tradition in 4? It’s not possible. It didn’t matter how hard I pushed, how much I worked, how late I stayed up to practice. I felt like Captain Jack Sparrow at the beginning of the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, sailing into the harbor standing at the tip-top of the mast, inches above the water, the rest of the ship sunk ages ago.

That’s what graduating from music school felt like, for me. The ceremonies and celebrations felt hollow. Sure I graduated with honors and bells and whistles, the ravenous academic benchmark satiated in the grids and forms I needed to pencil in to pass, but me? Why did I do this?

I have a better handle on what I need to work on, but I did NOT become “My ability to fucking play bebop.” Nor did I “Become my ability to stay rooted in any chord changes and take a coherent solo.” I crashed across the finish line feeling like an internal failure, dressed up in regalia that didn’t match my heart, and then I was pumped out into the world to “figure it out.”

So yes, I learned a lot. I became aware of ways to think, I developed a framework for understanding and practicing new concepts, and I finally learned a tune or two.

Looking back on my process, it makes my heart hurt. I see how hard I worked, how much I resolved to “do it,” and you know what? I did do it, but it hurt. Maybe I was just weak. Maybe I still am. But I did it. I started and I finished. And that means something, if only to me.

But maybe strength doesn’t come from never being weak. Maybe strength is something that you build, that you decide to continually show up for, something that you choose, amidst the waves of overwhelming demands.

I know it’s sensitive, my relationship to music. Part of me believes my value as a musician is tied to my ability to “pass,” to be judged well by those fucking people making the benchmarks. And yes, I know I need a thick skin, I know I need fail to grow. I know I need to be uncomfortable, to be rejected, to fall, to break. I know all of those things. I do.

And I know that the dichotomy of passing or failing is not the only way to relate to music. Sometimes I still need a reminder, something my teacher Jay Rinsen Weik told me as I was getting to the end of my wits and contemplating quitting music all together – Pass or Fail, did I show up? Did I contribute? Did I learn something? Because if I showed up, contributed, and learned, then whether I pass or fail, I always will win.

Sometimes it gets hard. Sometimes it seems to stay hard, but son, you gotta make it so you can win, you gotta be on your own team.

Don’t let the critic inside your head get you down folks. Keep at it and dig in.

Bows

_/\_

Sam

Kogen

3/12/21

Please use a discerning gaze when reading these claims, which deserve critical examination. This documentation represents a snapshot of my internal landscape at a certain point in time in my life during my collegiate career.

Original Entry:

In This Moment:

I transform my intention in relation to music from a drive to perfect to one of sonic exploration.

I have a set of tools with which life and I may breathe symbiotically through.

What is the animating force that swells and pulses through dimensions of reality?
What is it’s intent? What is my intent and motivation? What is my inspiration?

Rhythm allows one to organize time.

The mind disengages and begins to subconsciously hear rhythms that repeat more than 4 times. (I’m not sure where I pulled this information from at the time. I think I remember reading it somewhere, but I can’t speak to the efficacy or truth of this claim.) One may shape practices around a concept and engage with practice in new ways by transforming rhythm.

Move slowly enough to feel the pulse of rhythm, yet quickly enough for continuity.

Listening to and feeling empty space helps to incorporate and experience new rhythms.

Current Reflections

Sometimes, looking back on my own process is hard. Have you ever recorded yourself singing or playing music? Listening back is sometimes really uncomfortable, especially if you aren’t used to hearing yourself make sound. By placing ourselves into a new role, now the listener instead of the creator, we are given front row seats to our own performance. And the recording never lies. It shows us exactly where we are.

I’ve personally noticed a strange phenomenon in my own experience and relationship to singing, playing, recording, and listening back – sometimes the way that I feel when I am making sound disappears or changes when I’m listening to myself make sound.

Sometimes I feel like I am drenched in a feeling, expressing with pristine clarity, encoding a nebula of pure and raw emotion in sound and time. I know it rocks. I can feel it in my guts.

Then, when I listen back, it feels like I am drinking flat soda. I feel an aversion to the thing I just made. Its sound does N O T H I N G to reflect the feeling I had when creating it. In fact, it’s quite distasteful and I often don’t want to finish it.

A good friend of mine, Noah Martis explicitly shared this very insight with me once during a late night hang. We were listening to Noah Gundersen, Derrick Trucks, and Novo Amor*, and he told me “Sam, I like to listen back and make sure that what I am feeling when I am creating music is the same thing I feel when I’m listening to myself. If I can make myself feel the way that I do when I’m playing, but when I’m listening, I know I’ve got something. I start by making music for me, making music that I can feel.”

I’m deeply appreciative of Noah, his music, his process, and our friendship. He lights the fire under my ass and makes me want to do something, to dig in deeper, and to give it my everything.

And he is right. Ever since he told me that, I’ve been using that approach to check and see if what I play and sing feels as deeply real and tangible when I’m listening.

And it’s not always comfortable.

But it gets easier every time.

Sometimes it really sucks. Sometimes it’s not so bad. And sometimes it’s actually pretty damn cool.

If we can make the simple decision to document what we do, then take the time to look back at it, improving upon it starts to become the most natural response. We can sift through the junk, skim off the slime, and grab the best parts. And who knows what we will end up doing with the best parts of our artistic expression? Especially if they make us feel.

Are you still here?

We haven’t even really looked at the entry yet.

And you know what, I think that simply looking at the entry feeling something, even if it was an initial distaste lead us to explore some interesting waters, so thanks for joining me.

Bows

_/\_

Sam

Kogen

Photo Credit – Aleah Fitzwater

9/30/20

Please use a discerning gaze when reading these claims, which deserve critical examination. This documentation represents a snapshot of my internal landscape at a certain point in time in my life during my collegiate career.

Original Entry:

Juggling and Music:

As when I first began juggling, music too is an exploration, a play, a spin of patterns.

All of juggling is juggling; in fact, no part of reality is outside of juggling from the juggler’s mind. It took time to unearth this perspective, yet now it’s active and alive.

So too, all of music is music. Music delves beyond any of it’s component parts; all of unified reality is music.

Patterns, scales, arpeggios, rhythms – all music. I play with patterns to familiarize, then I apply them to perceived stimulus in reality: songs I hear, natural rhythms, other musicians, what I hear in my mind…

If I ever become stuck, recall that the material that “binds” is simply a singular expression of music and remember change is my friend.

Current Reflections:

This entry is refreshing. Juggling has continued to inform my music making process over the years. Some of my Papadosio friends may remember a time before I learned to juggle, many more of them might have connected with me because I was standing in a little patch of grass, myself with LED juggling balls through sweeping sets of music at a time during some of the early Rootwire Music and Arts Festivals. Oh, I have so many stories about juggling at festivals. I remember one night after Govinda slayed a set and ended around 2 or 3 AM, I kept walking around the grounds and juggling until the sun rose. When I finally sat down, I remember nestling into the dirt outside of our tent on a little incline, classical guitar in hand, slowly picking “Norwegian Wood” by The Beatles out of my memory. For the rest of the day, no matter what I was doing, I could still feel my hands juggling in some liminal space in front of my body where they had been dancing all night long.

Leaving my library of bizarre states of consciousness related to juggling aside, the process of juggling and the process of music making have always been closely related for me. I started to learn how to juggle during college in 2011, using 3 oddly shaped bouncy balls in the living room at my parents house at midnight. I continually tried to wrap my head around the process of juggling during breaks from writing papers for my comp class and banging my head against my chemistry homework, at the time on a pre-medical undergraduate track. I was going to be a doctor. Juggling and music were my solace from the overwhelming weight of school, and I spent as much free time as I could trying to deeply understand both.

After my first semester at college, I officially ditched the idea of becoming a doctor, had a brief fling with becoming a jazz saxophonist for a semester, then took a wild and fun gap year. It was nothing short of a miracle that I decided to go back to school – it would have been easy to keep on having fun, chilling, dancing, and working at a pizza place. Thankfully my friend Ryan Murray and I talked ourselves into going back to school to study music.

But that gap year was important for me. It gave me the opportunity to really dig into my understanding of music. That’s when I learned all of my major scales in all keys, figured out what arpeggios were, and began to unlock the fretboard. And I never stopped juggling; in fact, I juggled more, and more, and more, until I was dancing around local and distant concerts, running around the neighborhood, and studying new patterns arduously in my room, juggling like a madman.

For me, juggling and music evolved along two separate paths at that point: Music became rigid and regulated. I suddenly realized how much I didn’t know and was surrounded by a lotta cats who knew a whole HELL of a lot more than me. I was swimming for dear life in an ocean of unknowable depth. It felt like I had to work 10 times harder at my actual instrument to make anything remotely musical happen, while some of my peers seemed to shit beautiful sounds from their fingertips with their eyes closed. The environment was a pressure cooker. Sophomore year was one of the worst of my life, and my upperclassman years were slowly tinged with a hue of depression. All I could see was the benchmark I was missing, the next mark I would have to meet, and all of my shortcomings.

Don’t get me wrong,I learned so much more than I could have ever mustered on my own in my bedroom, regardless of how hard I was working before I decided to go back to school; but it was tough. Really tough. I almost quit my Junior year, but thankfully my teadher Jay Rinsen Weik talked me down and met me with some much needed compassion as I sat across from him on the brink of tears during one of our lesson hours that day.

I’m grateful for the hardship and the intense, diamond-forging heat that helped me arrive at this point. From here, I hope to keep growing with that same intensity. But I’m also recognizing that it might be more fun and sustainable to marry this academic intensity and drive with some of the free flowing, genuine curiosity that is my juggling process.

Early on I realized how unhelpful my anger and self-deprecation was for my process of juggling. I would drop the ball, look at it, and just seethe with hate. Stupid ball. I can’t do anything. Damn gravity.

Then one day, I dropped it, (HA) and realized how thankful I was that the ball didn’t disappear forever. All I had to do was bend down. I started picking up the ball faster and faster each time, making a game out of it, enjoying the opportunity to make a big scene of throwing all the balls up in the air. The pattern interrupt became a springboard to launch from during performance and a practice of patience in my study. I kept learning new ways to weave the pattern, locking one down into a stable state, then trying to imagine how I could build a layer on top of this sturdy pattern. I discovered I could walk, run, dance, and subdivide my catches to a beat. I found some ways to isolate balls, to hold them steady, to carry them, to swirl and spin them. And, by George, it was fun.

Juggling was a new skill, something I utterly COULD NOT do, that after some concentrated effort, became something I could do, arguably very well, compared to my profound inability at the beginning. I’ve actually made some money from juggling. Not a ton, but hey!

I learned a new skill, from nothing, just because I wanted to flow. And in learning a new skill, I got to peek under the hood of how I actually learned, what the process actually looked like. Let me tell you, it wasn’t how I thought I learned based on my early education and high school. It was hands on, sweat on the back, anger in the barrel, “fuck you I’m going to do this” gumption paired with breakthrough’s that were naturally rewarding. Strange states of consciousness emerged. Patterns clicked into place in an almost mechanical way. Progress was tangible, demonstrable, and could be carried anywhere. And by golly, it was still fun.

I’m still trying to push the edges of my ability, both as a musician and a juggler, and recently, I’ve been thinking of how I can bring the sweet flowing love of my juggling process into my learned and rigid tendency towards strict discipline on the guitar.

This is the evolution of this original entry. Everything that rises on the guitar, from your voice, or from your instrument of choice is music, if you choose to unconditionally love and see it as such. Multi-instrumentalist Art Lande told me once at a masterclass on Cal Arts’ Campus that it’s important to practice to let myself babble like a baby on my instrument, not to judge it. And pianist Kenny Werner talks about loving every sound that rises from your instrument unconditionally (Here).

In the same way, everything is juggling to the juggler’s mind, drops, throws, catches, stops, starts, conversations…

The question for me is still: how can I bring my practice of juggling through guitar; how can I bring my practice of guitar through juggling. How can I continue to understand and learn how to learn?

Bows

_/\_

Sam

Kogen

9/23/2020

Please use a discerning gaze when reading these claims, which deserve critical examination. This documentation represents a snapshot of my internal landscape at a certain point in time in my life during my collegiate career.

Original Entry:

Original Entry:

Everything Ingrained:

Is music a creation of mankind, or did Humanity just notice a much deeper and larger pattern in reality? Everything I see is defined by humans for humans, at least in a cultural sense; here, in saying a cultural sense, I mean the collective culture of all of humanity and our natural progression, unfolding from nature. As we evolved, we began shaping the earth for our benefit.

So, in studying music and language, as well as my own awareness and relationship to the world, what am I actually doing? What is this process of deepening experience and growth? What are encounters within reality?

All of my life I have been learning to communicate through different languages, more languages, perhaps than I am even aware of. Recently now, I find myself aware of a constant deepening of the universe’s tendency to communicate.

So, it seems, you and I, we talk about and around something much vaster and greater than either of us could ever hope to say. Life is in constant interconnection and communication, gauged against remarkably impossible uncertainty.

I understand a “this,” a “that,” and then the potential of interaction between those seemingly separate elements. As we interact, banter, and encounter, we create an exchange. The use of Taoist tendencies towards opposites, as in black and white, allow one to both establish and shatter patterns of habit.

Patterns can deepen and grow, or they can shatter and recycle completely into something new.

Every choice I make either strengthens, transforms, or destroys patterns. Every choice I make does something else entirely.

If I start getting locked in a pattern of stagnation, I can apply eastern principles of opposites to the stuck pattern to transform the perspective.

In just talking to @Tyler Aukerman, I was inspired by some of his experiences with breaking patterns. When he gets locked down in playing, he’ll listen to some recordings and transcribe a chorus of a solo for inspiration on any standard or tune he is working on.

If playing becomes locked, listen. What situations can I apply opposites and balance to? What are my patterns and habits? What am I “stuck” in?

(Write down, compose licks.) (Here we have a little side note to myself.)

Current Reflections:

This entry is clearly orbiting around an ongoing interest I hold in Taoist philosophy and the study of Yin and Yang. Starting just this year, I’ve begun to actually engage with and read the I Ching (Linked here is the Translation my teacher recommended for me, for anyone interested). I’m still in the beginning of my first read through of the text, and I recognize that my understanding is still quite undeveloped now. So when I wrote this in the early 2010’s, this lack of awareness on the subject is even more pronounced. Even still, I was quite taken with the philosophy and ideas in ancient Chinese thought back when I wrote this entry.

At the same time, I was quite readily attempting to apply my cursory understanding of Empowered Language from Mark England – who I have definitely cited previously on this blog. It’s funny, in retrospect, to recognize how much of an impact Mark made on my life in less than a half hour of conversation. That one encounter completely shifted my perspective and approach on how my mind uses the operating software of language to tell myself stories about the world. Thanks Mark.

The result of these two elements – a flowering interest in ancient eastern philosophy, as well as a radical reexamination of my use of language in my relationship with the universe?

The original entry above!

And for just a little more background on the circumstances and context that invited me to write this original entry – At the time I was actively studying Japanese and instrumental Jazz at the University of Toledo as an undergraduate, and was also beginning my own personal exploration and practice of Zen Buddhism.

If I were to place the original entry in simpler terms today, I might boil it down to this:

• Who am I, really?
• This universe clearly expresses opposites, as documented in ancient Chinese philosophy, as in Yin and Yang.
• How can I apply this ancient wisdom directly to my life now, especially as an artist in the ongoing development and refinement of my craft
• How can I directly apply this wisdom to my development as a human being?
• How can I fully engage with every moment, regardless of the contents or my reaction to it, transforming it into fuel for deepening my practice?

These all look like damn good questions to me.

As for answers or takeaways after all these years?

Well, first, I want to thank my teacher Jay Rinsen Weik for reminding me of the usefulness of the study of Yin and Yang, as well as for reminding me that our understanding of their relationship continually morphs, changes, and grows as we do.

Then, if I do become stuck in the creative process, I have an entire arsenal of remedies that I’ve collected over the years since I’ve graduated, embodied on an “inspiration alter” that I have in my office. It looks like this:

And, posted above it, some ways of getting “unstuck” that have been useful for me:

My practices for unsticking myself are continuing to evolve. Now I might also include: Playing some Xbox for an hour, Practicing scales and permutations, taking a run, connecting with my girlfriend.

The creative process and the development of our lives is an ongoing project; hopefully the project of a lifetime. And I do have to say, it’s nice to have traversed the gauntlet of University Music School and come out on the other side. There is so much less pressure to achieve and more freedom to explore and speak.

What practices do you use to unstick yourself? Do some tend to work better than others? Do you feel recharged with you practice, or does it drain you? I’d love to hear!

Bows _/\_

Kogen

Sam

9/16/2020

Please use a discerning gaze when reading these claims, which deserve critical examination. This documentation represents a snapshot of my internal landscape at a certain point in time in my life during my collegiate career.

Original Entry:

The Beings Embodying Music:

I embody different beings when I enter and engage with the field of music.

I am a being of craft. This is my technically proficient aspect, which focuses on fluidity, form, approach, and intimacy with the techniques involved with playing guitar.

I am a being of “student.” I learn and listen to masters around me and porously absorb their teachings.

I am a being of “teacher.” I “enlighten” beings as they engage with music with the “wisdom” of my own direct experiences.

I am a being of song; of melody and emotion, pure feeling of freedom, of expression, of my true voice – a love for sound.

I am a being of practice. With practice, I sift through myself and gently correct and redirect my flow, working with attention and intention to develop an ever deepening relationship with music.

I am a being of performance, an ego, a projection of my musical essence, observed by some audience.

I am a being of relationship. I am a spoke in a musical wheel, a part of the band. I am a voice that resonates and oscillates.

I am a being of ecstasy; I am high, one with the music and moved beyond words, formless as wind, as flexible as air, drifting with love as incense smoke.

When I practice, as I move through these different beings, these different aspects of myself, which parts of myself need loving, attention, and intention? Where am I weak? Where am I strong? How can I grow from and with the present circumstances?

Current Reflections:

This entry is an interesting one. Also informed by conversations I’ve had with my teacher, Jay Rinsen Weik, here, in the context of Zen Training and personal development. I remember attending a workshop at the Buddhist Temple of Toledo several years ago, a meeting after Sunday service; Rinsen was talking about setting yearly intentions and documenting the process in writing. I’m sure there is a podcast or recording of the actual meeting floating around on the internet somewhere.

For me, the biggest takeaway from the workshop rose in our investigation of the questions:

“What roles do I inhabit in my life?”

“What responsibilities do I hold in each of these roles?”

And:

“How can I develop, challenge myself, and evolve in each of these roles in a way that is actually attainable?”

Roshi shared with us that he learned this process of inquisitive journaling, examination of life roles and responsibility, and setting intentions largely from his father, Otto Weik (Carpets by Otto, anyone?). He also shared that he has integrated yearly intention setting as an annual practice, one he engages with every December in the winter lull. This is a way and time for him to reflect on his current life trajectory and the projects associated with the different roles he embodies in his daily life.

This practice has been invaluable to me, one that I have adapted for myself every winter; here, in this entry, it is showing up in a microcosm, now examining the different aspects of my musical practice. The language is a little different, as I ask myself:

“Who am I, as a musician?”

“What roles do I embody and engage with in my artistic growth?”

And:

“What are my strengths and weaknesses in these different roles?”

Today, would my roles change? How would I word it?

Roles of Sam’s Musical Life:

• Craft – How can I work at the edge of my ability to stretch my capacity and technical finesse beyond my current limits?
  • Melody, Harmony, Rhythm – Many teachers I have encountered over the years have highlighted these three elements of music as three different technical baskets of training. This distillation into Melodic, Harmonic, and Rhythmic training is not the ultimate way of breaking down music, but has been a helpful way of engaging in practice
  • Fretboard Training – How the heck does the guitar work? Where do the notes live? How do different musical forms relate to each other? How do forms overlap and interact? How can one see this form in many different contexts?
• Student – As a student, my relationship to the world has changed. I don’t have as many regular traditional lessons with teachers, though I still deeply cherish the lessons I do have. Now, I find myself as a student of recordings, a student of listening, as well as a student of my own students. I am finding that the more I teach, the more I realize the gaps in my own understanding and the places I need to evolve. As a student of recordings, I’ve been finding great nourishment in transcribing music that I love to listen to, music that inspires me.
• Teacher – As a teacher, I find myself participating in and acting as a catalyst for the growth of my students. How can I take my verifiable experience as a musician and distill it into a way for my students to engage the process of music making, finding their own unique path? I like to think in systems. How can we bring musical systems online, from the ground up?
• Composer/Arranger – How can I take my my technical knowledge and my emotional awareness and channel it into sound in a way that reflects a tangible feeling? How can I arrange existing pieces in new ways that evoke a deep and engaging feeling in myself and in the world?
• Singer – How can I engage with and use my voice in a way that allows it to resonate best in my body? What technical adjustments can I make to enable the smoothest and cleanest tone quality possible? How can I use my breath to support the sound? How can I use my intention and emotion to convey the feeling and story in my body through sound and words?
• Collaborator – As a collaborator and teammate, how can I best contribute to the creative moment in a way that is useful? Am I able to share my ideas freely? Can I let go of attachment to my own ideas and be okay with cutting pieces away, changing my idea, and working to best serve the collective musical creation? Can I get out of my own way?
• Improvisor – How can I evolve my ability to speak freely through my instrument? How can melodic ideas cross harmonic changes? How can I speak freely over traditional standard repertoire, utilize rhythmic motivic development, and tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end, using only my guitar? How can I take my ability to improvise to the next level?
• Writer/Storyteller – How can I use the direct experience of my life to communicate through my poetry and lyrics? How can I use the struggles, suffering, and practice of my own life to tell a story that matters – both to myself and to those around me. How can I use my art as a way to relieve suffering?

There may be other aspects to my musical life, other roles that I embody as a musician, but for now, it feels good to examine and outline the beings that show up for me in my own musical process.

What roles do you inhabit in your life? What responsibilities do you have? Where are you strong? What could use some love and nurturing? What is the edge of your practice? and How do we gently, yet firmly lean into the places that will help us grow?

_/\_

Sam

Kogen