The Music Lesson & Zen Guitar

I recently finished a book called "The Music Lesson" by Victor Wooten. Though a lot of people haven't heard of him, Victor Wooten is one of the finest bassists in the world. If you haven't heard of him, I'd strongly suggest you check out his work as part of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. In the introduction, he says that a number of people had suggested to him that he write an instructional book to teach others to play as he does, and this was as close as he was going to get. It certainly isn't a conventional music instruction book.

One of Mr. Wooten's key points is that the way music is usually taught overemphasizes the student learning which notes to play. He points out that there are so many other components that make up good music as well, and provides numerous examples to make this point.

The book is written as a novel rather than an instruction book, with the main characters being the author himself as a young man and an enigmatic stranger named Michael who turns up uninvited in his living room and starts showing him things that mainly pertain to music, but also extend beyond that. Each chapter covers some aspect of making music, most of which don't involve which notes to play when. He also emphasizes that each player must ultimately find his own expression rather than imitate anybody else. Reading this really made me think about what I'm doing musically. I'd highly recommend this book to any aspiring musician regardless of their instrument of choice. The section on how to make someone else's solo sound better is worth the price of the book all by itself.

The one reservation I'd have about recommending this book is that the author is heavily influenced by Eastern philosophy. That obviously is no problem at all from my perspective, but at least one review I read objected to what the reviewer called Wooten's "yoga-style philosophy". It's true that the content is steeped in Eastern philosophy throughout, especially in the last chapter or two, but I'd argue that even a musician with a bias in the opposite direction would find enormous value in the quality of the musical content. I wish I could have read this book when I was just starting out, and I will lend it to as many of my musical friends who are willing to read it.

I'm still in the process of reading "Zen Guitar", which is similarly a book addressing various facets of playing guitar specifically, with quotes from a number of well known players. It's not as inspirational or directly useful as "The Music Lesson", but still good stuff, and the sections are brief, making it convenient for a quick reading before performance or practice. I'd also recommend this one, if not as highly.

The Trouble with Heroes

And by this, I mean comics as well as the TV series I was watching last night, because I realized they seem to have the same problem, and probably for the same reason.

The trouble with the TV series is that things don't ever really seem to change. The writers try to re-frame the characters somehow each season, and yet it always feels as though I'm watching the same conflicts I saw the season before. And I think it's because I am.

I think the writers are defining the characters almost entirely in terms of one particular conflict or problem, and each season they come up with a modified take on the same thing, rather than moving the character on to something else. And since they do this with every character, it leaves the viewer with the sense that they're watching the same season over and over again.

Comic book super heroes often do this as well. The writers can change some things, and in fact have to in order to try to keep the book fresh, but sooner or later the changes have the potential to redefine the character and risk losing what appealed to readers in the first place. And so sooner or later, someone hits the reset button.

It's true that human beings commonly repeat their mistakes to some degree. Eventually we learn a few things and try a different approach to avoid the repetition, but sometimes the particular mistake involved is so central to our nature or to how we define ourselves that it takes time to find a solution that works. On the other hand, we're not entirely stupid, and once in a while we finally figure it out and successfully change something after a few tries.

A potential problem with successful change is that inevitably there are people who like us just the way we were and aren't very happy about that change, which leads to new problems we then have to solve, and so life continues. Good stories come from that, too.

If I could try to fix "Heroes", I'd let a couple of the characters actually learn from their mistakes once in a while and move on to some other issues, and keep some of them the way they are to change the overall dynamic. Life is change, and stories that don't involve some amount of change in somebody usually aren't good stories. I think I'm going to have to give up on this show, even though the dark carnival intrigues me. Maybe I'll watch some Carnivale on DVD instead.

New Cabal Cast and Character Development

This past Sunday we pulled together the players for my next local campaign, based on the GURPS Cabal background. I won't be running it until early next year, but I wanted to start getting some ideas down for it, and make it a little more fleshed out than my last couple of local campaigns. For the most part, the idea of this meeting was to make sure all of the characters came in at the campaign value of 300 points, and to see if there were any obvious problems in the dynamics between the characters.

All went relatively smoothly, though the levels of preparation varied dramatically from "entirely GURPS ready with a fully conceived backstory" to "I have an idea for a guy with this power and virtually no background". Special assist credit to our host, Mike H, for helping one of the less prepared guys GURPSify his character while I did the fun part of working with everybody else on details of their backgrounds that will bring things to life. We have a fair amount of overlapping detective skills (and surprisingly, no magic, even with Unlimited Mana as an option!), but a certain amount of redundancy in that area isn't necessarily a Bad Thing.

Between this experience and my work on the Paranoia convention scenario, it reminded me of how the most important thing for me in RPGs is to bring a certain life to the characters. Everything else depends on that. I had some social criticism ideas for TPK, but it didn't truly grab my interest and breathe until I worked out who the player characters were going to be and how they related to each other. It's the same thing with these Cabal characters. Now that I have a sense of who they are by themselves and relative to each other, the story we make together starts to write itself. All I have to do is take some notes and light the path a little so we don't miss the most fun parts.

Paging Mr. Pareidolix

This post is specifically for Andrew, in the hope that you'll see it. I tried to e-mail you a request for the campaign rules for Pareidolix, but hadn't gotten a response at either one of two addresses, so you've either been busy or never received the messages. If you happen to read this post, please e-mail those rules to me when you get a chance.

Thanks!

TPK for Paranoia

I've finally gotten started again on my next convention project. TPK is an acronym for my actual working title, which I don't like very much, and also happens to be a recognized RPG term that's very appropriate for the setting. It just gives me something mildly amusing to call it until I come up with something better.

I always enjoy Paranoia, but have to admit that it's hard to come up with enough truly funny stuff. The real funny has to come from the players in the end, but you've got to give them the raw material to do it.

I have a basic outline for the situations the characters will face, and now I'm working on the player characters and their goals. For the first time, I don't have a strong and specific theme I'm using, which leaves me a bit lost in some respects. Still, I think I'm on the right track because when I describe some of the bits I'm not sure about to my wife, she laughs at the things that are supposed to be funny, and she's not shy about telling me when they aren't.

Without an obvious theme, I'm hoping this is going to turn out like the YMCA bit in the first Wayne's World movie, where it sneaks up on the audience. I'd better get back to it while I'm on a relative roll.