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Original Entry: Long Term Guitar Goals

11-15-2014

  • Internalize a Repertoire of tunes in all keys
  • Internal 4-Dimensional map of guitar fretboard and perfect pitch recall
  • Visualization/imagination “Mind Guitar”
  • Seeing ears and hearing eyes
  • Imagination fueled chord-hearing
  • Relearn guitar in mind, internally

Current Reflections: Looking Back

This is a rare entry where I actually left the date in on the original pages. So what the heck was I thinking about a nearly a DECADE ago?

Well, thanks for asking, I was thinking about my ideal future as a guitar player, I was sketching out a vision of myself for the ages, charting out what I believed would be sick, dude. The list makes me smile as I read over my grand guitar blueprint.

So maestro, did you ever meet any of these metaphysically oriented “Long Term Guitar Goals”?

Wonderful question, let’s take a look.

Internalizing Repertoire

No. 1 on my grand list was to ensure that I had a repository of musical knowledge in the form of memorized tunes in all twelve (or 15) major keys. This of course was rooted in my current jazz studies back in 2014 and had logical utility – if I have a handful of tunes, say five to ten jazz standards, including: melody, harmony, and rhythm, all memorized in all keys, I would be forever upright and unshakable at jam sessions.

Any person could call a tune in any key, and on the bandstand, my heart would not drop, I would not be lost, inert, afraid, ineffective, small, damaged, spiraling into chaos and a hell of my own personal design.

Jees, that escalated quickly.

Okay, so maybe I have some core value issues tied to my desire to hang with the band on stage. That’s fine. Best saved for another day.

But regardless, interesting to see from this present vantage point. There was a hurting part of me that believed that if I worked extremely hard, maybe I could compensate for the inadequacies that “plagued” my ability to show up fully in a live music setting.

So, how’d it go? Did you do it?

Pfft. Hell no.

I definitely studied many tunes in all twelve keys over the years. This is an amazing practice, one that yields intriguing and useful insights into the structure, heart, and intention of any given tune. I regularly take my technical studies in all twelve keys in an thorough and exhaustive exploration of the possibilities of any given form; for all the guitarist out there, these structures include: triads, 7th chords, drop 2’s, drop 3’s, pentatonics, major scales, melodies, licks, progressions, and on and on.

Super valuable.

But internalizing a repertoire of tunes in all keys?

Not quite.

I have two thoughts.

  1. This is an interesting idea, at its heart. Even a decade later, I perceive the value and feel the heat from this original intention – there is something of immense value in memorizing a core handful of standards in all keys, although the years have also given me an insight into the state of my heart during college. My reasons for internalizing repertoire have shifted with the seasons that have flickered past. Of course it sucks to get lost during jams, but my value isn’t determined by how awesome I am on the guitar.
  2. Memorizing a handful of songs in a single key has been a more important step in my journey than my original intention from 2014. As a guitar player, I struggled for years with being able to play a single song from start to finish. It took nearly a decade before I could, with confidence, say “yes, know one song.”

    Something has happened for me in the last ten years, solidified by recitals, gigging, teaching, and facilitating student performances. Some songs have embedded themselves in my consciousness (in a single key), and I doubt that I will forget them.

    Within the internalizing of these songs, I’ve tasted the freedom felt and intended in this original post. And this freedom lies at the heart of this first point.

Internal 4-Dimensional Map and Perfect Pitch

Gees, that’s not a tall order by any means. What the hell do I even mean, an internal 4D map of the fretboard?

Oh, and I’d just like a side of perfect pitch along side this interdimensional awareness; can you do that for me, teach?

Jokes aside, what kind of wizarding madness was I hoping for back in 2014?

Time.

I was hoping for a deeper integration and mastery of Time.

Time as a sense, as a stream of tangible, malleable, and regulated perception.

What if we suspend both disbelief, as well as concrete inevitability, and just playfully imagine what it might be like to experience Time as a biological system? What if, somehow, humans have the capacity to perceive time through a specialized organ, say the brain, or some region of the brain? And what if the object of perception for our time-organ is a stream of sensory data as concrete, unique, and clearly defined as, say, our sense of sight versus our sense of touch?

Colors, depth, shadow, perspective, tone, hue – these are distinctly visual characteristics – different from sensations of touch: heat, cold, roughness, smoothness, tingles, sharpness, comfort, discomfort.

Here we have two unique senses that perceive the exact same universe – raw vibrations processed through specialized systems that translate into unique, distinct, and rich perceptual experiences.

What would it look like if we could experience time, not incidentally or passively, as a victim on the waves of some monstrous ocean, but actively, intentionally, with conscious engagement in our experience of its passing?

What could that even possibly BEGIN to look like?

That’s what I wondered when I wrote those words: Internalize a 4-dimensional map of the guitar fretboard.

So maybe, in this case, our organ of perception could fractal or manifest in a microcosm – the guitar fretboard.

What if our organ of perception of time is the guitar itself?

Can we perceive through the guitar? And what would that perception be like?

What if the object of our perception is the experience of sound, rhythm, and the resulting music that expresses itself through time?

Hmm.

Perfect Pitch.

I met a girl once at Cal Arts who apparently taught herself the skill or maybe perception of perfect pitch.

The idea was always attractive, some ability to instantly recognize the pitches I hear, relative to some absolute and concrete map of sound.

I don’t have perfect pitch. I haven’t learned the skill. Maybe I will?

I’m not sure it matters. What I know for sure? It’s absolutely possible to develop a sharp sense of relative pitch, to recognize the shape of sound relative to an intimately familiar instrument.

Practice transcribing music on your instrument. Learn it by ear. It only helps.

If this is something you are interested in, but are having trouble with, I know a guy.

Visualization/Imagination and the “Mind Guitar”

If you hadn’t yet noticed, I was plagued by some pretty heady thoughts in the midst of my academic training; see example No. 800 Billion – Visualization and the Mind Guitar.

I think we are all mostly familiar with our ability to visualize.

Classic example: I say, “Don’t think about a pink elephant with purple polka dots,” and the first thing we tend to do is imagine this monstrous Barbie Ice Cream Creature.

The point that fascinated me when I first wrote this entry went a little deeper into this ocean of

** I M A G I N A T I O N **

How vividly can we actually imagine? How deeply can a human being possible see and feel into our own minds?

Have you seen Shutter Island? Inception? The Butterfly Effect?

Dark and ominous undertones aside, what would it be like to have our imagination working synergistically with our intentions? What if we could, somehow, carve out some space in our minds to let our imagination work FOR us, for the purpose of some pursuit, say PLAYING MUSIC?

What would it take to develop a scratchpad in our mind for our imagination to test out ideas? What if we had a double, or a clone of our perception – sight, sound, smell, touch, taste, thought – that we could literally experience and experiment with, as we engage with solving creative, musical, and artistic problems?

Can I play my guitar, even if my instrument is in it’s case at home? Can I hear it, as it would be, as it is, but only in my mind? What would that be like, to have my imagination as a sense, as a tool kit, or as an innate human capacity – one that could serve my exploration and creativity?

But what if I fail? What if I’m late, if I get into an accident, or if all the people around me die? What if the world comes to an end, or the bombs fall? What if there is an invasion, an infestation, parasites in my livestock, bandits in the night, intruders in my home?

What if indeed.

Seeing Ears, Hearing|Imagination Fueled Chord Hearing|Relearn The Guitar in The Mind

HA! Maybe you’ve got the gist, at this point. There isn’t much more to say about these last few points, because they are simply remixes of the topics that we discussed above

I’ll say it one more time:

** I M A G I N A T I O N **

In The End

If you made it to the end, congratulations, that was a lot to slog through. It took several weeks to finish this one; the more I unpacked, the more I realized there was to unpack. If you are interested in any of these ideas, drop a comment, this is the Agora – a place for philosophical discussions and conversation to flourish.

Either way, I hope that you found some inspiration, intrigue, and fuel for your practice this week.

Love and Bows

_/\_


Sam

Kogen

Current Gear

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Metronome

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Books

Real Book 6th Edition – https://amzn.to/3YyDNxA

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Here is a piece that was composed back in 2012. It’s a little bit dated now, but I hope you enjoy.

 

The Gorgeous orb of fire gently sank beneath the clouds as a serene shipwreck into the mountains dotting the horizon. Raphael gazed deeply into her misty blue eyes and felt his heartstrings plunge into his glowing center, which he was confident they were sharing; they always had been, and they always would. The emotion swelled in his throat and he felt his eyes glisten as they captured the fading rays of perfection. Perfection…Perfection…Perfection…Perfection…

His mind hung on the word, the three syllables cutting through a strange emptiness he now felt. In fact, his attention swiveled completely and he almost began to feel nauseous. Something felt wrong. Impossibly wrong. It reminded him of a picture; the colors in the sky looked gruesomely lurid, over saturated and bloody. Gazing at his scaly hands, an ethereal sensation washed across his mind and tingled down through his pulsing body, his epidermis crawling with a reptilian dryness. It was all moving so slowly, much too slowly. As she laughed, drops of spittle hung in the air like flecks of dust in an endless vacuum, her honeycomb giggle crunching across his eardrums. From razor blue to a fiery purple to a sickening green, her eyes splintered and fractured the seemingly barren light. He could see the blood pumping through the veins in his eyes and he could see the emptiness of her perfect form cutting a womanly puzzle piece out of the inflated image of his vision. Time roiled around the seams and he realized himself yet again, frozen in a snapshot.

This is what happens to the moment after it passes through us… The thought echoed off indefinitely and grew louder with each oscillation. There was no resolve, the moment stagnated more deeply within itself and his world began to crumble. Billions of thoughts rushed through his mind at light speed, and each consumed his entire focus; He was trapped, a never ending roller coaster. The shattered image of his life had long ago faded, and his environment had taken on a new shape, a new form, breathing, moving, alive, yet absolutely empty. What is this. The question felt more like a command. A story, a book. Impossible. Thinking back, he remembered every single fairy tale and novel, every motion picture, every single storyline ever, beginning, middle, and end. It always happens so perfectly, the guy gets the girl, they overcome evil, live happily ever after. The dragon is always slain. Did they ever realize they were only a story? No. They couldn’t have. The thought was sickening, dreadful, empty.

As he sat in the charged scene that was rapidly consuming his essence, he felt empty. The air was electric, volatile, reacting to his every thought, so he leaned further into the emptiness. The blackness wrapped around him and pushed away from the light, from the crazy scene in his mind’s eye; he felt fear move through him, yet it didn’t bother him. It quickly passed and was replaced by an unending chain of emotions. He didn’t want any of them. The thoughts began to solidify and create unending waves of potential. None of it. I don’t want any of it. I don’t want. I long for nothing. This sick game pushed him over the edge. He wrapped himself even tighter in the blackness. The tension surged through his body, then resided like the ocean waves, then rewound around his soul, and lapsed back into emptiness. A lulling motion, as a hammock, or the wind in the trees, or the pulse of sex, or…

He could feel a strange point ahead of him. A velocity. A familiarity. He wanted to explode. Its all a game…A dance, a fight. It takes two…Who is it that writes the story…? As his mind froze, he felt another freeze, not so far away, just around the corner. Whirling around his eyes pierced the blackness for the presence, yet all he saw was a faint flicker, just out of reach. What is that? He softly wondered as it drew closer. A gentle tug, something delightful. Something soft, warm, familiar. He leaned closer and the light ballooned into a brilliant hue of color and he felt a slither around his fingertips. The life returned to his body and his eyes, and the lush grass beneath him seemed to hold him tightly, he fit perfectly into the form that held him. A sharp gasp of cool air and…

Raphael sat up into an orange and purple sky and a cool breeze on his brow, loving arms wrapped around his chest.

“What is it love?” Sarah asked as her lover shifted. A heavy sob caught her completely off guard and the incredible love in her heart pivoted 180 degrees and a dreadful unease began crawling up her back. “Raphael?” She ventured, her mind alert and worrying. His green eyes pierced her soul, and the tension faded immediately when she saw the emotion that lay beneath. The child within Raphael gazed up at her as if he had never seen such beauty in his entire life. Sarah almost felt like crying suddenly, and she realized they were sharing a similar feeling, though in her mind she couldn’t fathom what it was or where it had grown from, but it didn’t matter. “Are you okay?” She smiled through misty eyes.

He nodded dumbly and drew closer, feeling her heartbeat reverberate in his lungs. They sat for awhile in the starry night sky, leaning comfortably on the tree they had collapsed onto during their laughing fit, until they both drifted off into sleep. Sarah’s dreams tightly followed the experience of the night, from the breathtaking hike to the summit of hawk creek mountain, to the joyous laughter that brought them to their knees to the mysterious emotion that had moved Raphael to tears.

But the story and the teller, they slept in absolute peaceful emptiness…

©

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Hey All,

Thanks for popping in and glancing over these words. I am honored that you have found your way into this small corner of the internet and have decided to stay.

I’ve never really done any public blogging before, although I love to journal in the physical world. I figured it might be a fun exploration to share some of my creative process in a more public way. There are some artists that I love, and as I sit and think about it, would invest quantities of time and attention into researching their process. Give a little, take a little, pass the inspiration around and document the results, and refine.

So now I need to take the time to go and snoop around and see what there is to learn from the people who inspire me. If you are interested, I’ll share it with you, dear friend and way-seeker, and I’d like to invite you to share any thoughts or feelings that you may have.

Thanks again for hanging for a minute. Stay frosty.

_/\_ Bows
Sam