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.

Never Gonna Give Your Teen Spirit Up

This video mash-up has been around for a while, dropping Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" into Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", but I only became aware of it recently. Seems to work out far too well. If I ever have the chance to sing "Smells Like Teen Spirit", I just might lapse into "Never Gonna Give You Up", just for laughs...

The Music Project - Most Recent Session, and the Naming Process

We almost had two guitar players for today's session, so we still had one left when one of them went down with an injury. I'm not kidding. My stepnephew was supposed to make his second appearance with us, but did his thumb some serious mischief in an accident while painting a house. He tried to play guitar afterward to test it, and when the bandages kept getting bloodier, it was obvious that this wasn't a good idea.

The new guy, Rob, hadn't yet learned all of the songs, so we primarily focused on the ones he was able to learn for the session. We really only got through four songs with him, though we did each a couple of times, and they were improving on each attempt, so we're going to invite him back and hopefully we'll be able to get more done when he's had the chance to work on more of the songs we've been playing. Unfortunately for me, he doesn't sing, so I'm still on my own in that department unless Bryan or Bob shows up again. And Rob's tastes run heavier than ours, so there are signs that if we let him pick some songs (and it's only right that he should if he'll be sticking around), I'll be putting some serious strain on my voice in the near future.

It was a real joy to stay on bass again and just focus on singing and how the bass worked with the drums for a change. I think Jason and I sounded good together for the most part, if a bit rusty in spots.

After Rob had to leave, I picked up the guitar and Jason and I ran through some new songs we haven't tried before. "Cath" by Death Cab for Cutie probably sounded the best of them. It's definitely not a song I would've chosen myself, but I really like the lyrics.

It seems as though Rob is likely to stick around, and Bryan had shown new interest (at least until he was injured), so Jason raised the issue of naming the group. I'd been thinking we didn't really need a name, since we weren't planning on playing in public apart from the odd party, but it would make some things easier if we called it something. We have a few ideas we like, but nothing finalized yet. If anyone reading this has ideas on the subject, I'm more than willing to listen.

New Toy - Boss ME-50

My wife has been particularly supportive of my musical activities recently and has actually been encouraging me to spend money on it (time remains a trickier issue). We discussed her philosophy behind it, which I won't go into here, but the bottom line is that I don't think this point of view is going anywhere soon. She's been very encouraging regarding my progress on guitar over the last several months. Life is good.

And so I picked up an effects device that I can use for both guitar and bass, spending a couple of hours playing with it this afternoon. Big Fun, and practical in several respects. One of the effects will allow me to play a bass part and a guitar part at the same time, which is especially useful since we have only two players at the moment. At the very least, several of the effects will help fill out the sound, and some of the stranger effects will at least add novelty value for jamming. I've never had a wah pedal before, and had a blast playing bass with it.

My wife actually gave me heck for not coming home on the same trip with a Fender Stratocaster I've had my eye on. I hate to miss such an opportunity, but at the same time, there are more practical things I should probably be putting money into at this point.

May

No, not the month. It's a movie title, and specifically the name of the main character. But on to the point...

This movie is a disturbing little affair I found on Netflix, and wouldn't have taken a chance on pre-Netflix. It focuses on one of my favorite subjects, which is the weirdness behind the person next door. I probably find it so fascinating precisely because it's exactly the sort of thing most people don't like to think about.

May is an attractive, but shy and odd sort of girl (and she has reason to be). In the course of the movie you follow her through a series of attempts to relate to other people, which of course don't work out very well, or it wouldn't be much of a movie. The point is that you really come to feel for her, even as she becomes stranger and stranger. There are no supernatural elements here, and I think they would actually have taken away from the impact. It's a lot more frightening to think that people can do this without some kind of powerful interference than if you had the Irresistible Boogie Man clearly running the show from behind the scenes.

One of the Netflix user reviews described "May" as being more of a character study than a horror film, and I'd say that's exactly correct. There are horrific elements, but they're not the point, really. This one is well worth a rental some time when you're in the mood for something off the beaten path. It's low budget, so don't go in expecting much, but it's quite well done and worth a look. I won't even try to give a numeric rating because your viewpoint on it will depend a lot on what you're looking for in the first place.

The Happiest Man in the World

I wouldn't have expected something like this to be measurable, but apparently some scientists have given it a pretty good try, and the best results were from a Buddhist monk named Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche.

An organization called the Mind and Life Institute worked with Richard Davidson, the director of the Weisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior at the University of Wisconsin. The bottom line result is that people who had spent a lot of time meditating (they compare it to the amount of a time an Olympic athlete puts into training for the Olympics) showed much greater activity in the parts of the brain associated with happiness than the average person, showing as much as 700 to 800 percent more activity. And our boy Yongey was the champion of the bunch, standing out significantly even from the other champion meditators.

The good news for more mainstream folks is that even beginning meditators showed a 10 to 15 percent improvement over average people, so you don't have to devote your life to it to feel results.

So now I'm reading Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche's book, "The Joy of Living". It's interesting stuff, drawing from both Buddhist training and science. His father was a scientist and had a lot of friends who were significant figures in the world scientific community while he was growing up, and they were more than willing to talk with him about science, so he learned everything he could from them. His main point is that the more he learns about science, the more he feels it validates spiritual ideas that have been around for thousands of years.

The most significant application for me has been his detailed descriptions of various meditation techniques, which I've been putting to use. It's far too soon to expect results of any kind, but I don't think I'll ever be bored again. There's too much available to do with a human mind, even in an empty room with nothing in particular to do outwardly. Maybe in a year or two I can honestly claim some of that 10-15% improvement in my mental well being.