The School of Feedback Guitar Blog

Note: There are critical problems with Plantetary at the time of publishing this blog post. The author has not yet uploaded any fixes to the bugs seen in the app.

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If by chance you and I are friends on Twitter, you may have noticed some of my tweets about NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day. I love seeing beautiful pictures from space. Sometimes, it looks like fiction, it's so real. It comes as no surprise that once a friend showed me the iPad app Planetary, I was all over it. Planetary, by Bloom Studio, is the best app I have ever seen for the organization of a music library.

Planetary's concept is simple. Your galaxy is your music collection. Stars in this galaxy are artists you like. Albums of that artist appear as planets, and the songs of that album appear as moons. The concept alone is good, but visually? This app is beautiful. The animation is beautiful too. There is a feature that allows the user to have slow animation of the camera view. It is gorgeous.

The author of the app also documented his creative process. I really got a kick out of reading it. I love how it basically started with an incredibly random idea:

This photo, taken by the Cassini probe, was the original inspiration for the Planetary app. We decided to model the iPad music library after a model of a solar system. Several solar systems in fact. Each star in our universe will be an artist in your music library. Each of these stars will be orbited by planets representing albums. Each planet will have a moon system with each moon representing a track.

The full text is a fascinating read. The result is that those of us who drop the money to have an iPad are lucky to have an amazing app for visualizing our music collections.

http://planetary.bloom.io/

Download it here: http://itunes.apple.com/app/planetary/id432462305

Mountains, from Karamatsu Mountain Lodge, by Tsuda. Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Space. Retreat. Silence. No wonder why vacations are so… lovely.

I love to let go of things that get in the way of my creativity. It simply means I end up with more energy and time for stuff which is more important, and more pleasing, to me. I have a hunch, and I want to share it in the form of an experiment. Please bear with the teacher/nag side of me for just one blog post. At least consider the following creative lifestyle design challenge:

1. Try to narrow down one big distraction in your life. Your child or spouse doesn't count - they need your love. Email might count, talking on the phone, movies, or going to parties. The point is, find something that gets in the way of what you really want to be doing.
2. Judge how much trouble you'd get in if you didn't commit to this big distraction for one week. 
3. Commit to not-doing this big distraction for one week.

Twyla Tharp does this whenever she's deep in the throes of a creative binge. Hugh MacLeod states that we might need fewer pillars. Either which way you slice it, getting rid of one distraction for one week helps you get a little bit of space.

Julia Cameron's excellent book The Artist's Way describes the result of reading deprevation, which can be substituted for any tool of choice for getting more space:

Even at the safe remove of the written word, I can feel the shockwaves of antagonism about trying this tool. I will tell you that those who have most resisted it have come back the most smugly rewarded for having done it. The nasty bottom line is this: sooner or later, if you are not reading you will run out of work and be forced to play.

Does this design experiment seem a little out there for you? I understand. It's not for everyone. But if you need a push in this direction, here's some lines from a William Wordsworth poem to help the home team:

When from our better selves we have too long
Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,
Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,
How gracious, how benign, is Solitude.

To me, the value of studying design history and designer biographies is that it is a reminder that all the designs that seem so fundamental (like Helvetica) were once just sketches in a sketchbook. Learning how things came into existence, and the creative processes behind them, helps you realize that you yourself have the possibility of doing the same thing. And at the same time, learning about the ideas and methods oif other designers is a sobering reminder of the amount of work and level of ambition that are actually needed to get there.

...and then later on:

You probably don't need to study Helvetica's history in order to use it successfully. But if you want to create tomorrow's Helvetica, it is probably a good idea if you do.

- Nille Svennson, Sweden Design, as seen in Emigre No. 65

Much thanks to David Hobizal for sending me this awesome quote.

Beersheba, inspection of Camel Corps by H.E. (i.e., His Excellency) Sir Harold McMichael. Seargent of Camel Corps mounted with line of camels in background, Library of Congress

Passion is a horse in a desert. Horses are not exactly prime transportation in that situation… eventually you'll be walking. A camel, however, is ideal for long desert treks. It can survive great duress and is well-suited to the harsh climate. If passion is to a horse, then good work and craftsmanship is to a camel.

Craftsmanship at first glance seems to be the silver bullet. If we work hard enough, sustainably enough, we can pull through most obstacles. It's true, but there are times in our pursuits when good craftsmanship, the camel in the analogy, can go against us and what we want to do.

If, for example, you tend to be a perfectionist, letting go of a project is kind of tough. There is always one more tweak, one more thing to finish up. Sometimes it's difficult to realize that there are diminishing returns if we go at it too long. Letting go, and being satisfied with the result is a wise energy saving move.

Another consideration is that passion is lightning fast and full of heat. My hunch is that passion needs less attention to detail, and more raw expression of the idea. Getting stuck in the details before even starting a project can be a bad thing. We could lose the heat that drove us to start in the first place. Getting mired in the nuts and bolts before jumping in might mean we miss out on something new. Passion requires a readiness to jump in. The water is cold at first.

My take is that craftsmanship is important to cultivate in any pursuit. As I get older, it really comes down to how much good work I do as opposed to how passionate I am about the work. But it also means being flexible enough to jump into passion when it arrives, and not being afraid to give craftsmanship the day off.

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For those who are interested in how passion and craftsmanship could affect their guitar playing, check out my post on the differences between Jack White and Manuel Barrueco. Jack is to passion while Manuel is to craftsmanship. In addition, I wrote a blog post on the band The National. They take considerable pain to craft a song so it has what I like to call The Funnel Effect: the listener is magnetically pulled in, and has to finish the song.

For those interested in reading more about passion vs craftsmanship, I would suggest the Study Hacks blog. On it, Cal Newport writes often about how relying on passion, following your dreams, etc, is widely stated as the means to a successful career but rarely leads to one. Cal introduces his idea in his blog post The Career Craftsman Manifesto. Highly recommended.

Barbara Lynn is the only musician I have ever seen who plays upstrokes on the downbeats and uses a thumbpick for melodies in-between the strums. It's so completely unique, and still somehow is secondary to the soul she has in delivering her song. It reminds me of the anonymous Haitian guitarist who plays so differently, and yet perfectly.

The video is great for one final reason too: It is ample proof that there is no wrong way to play guitar. One's guitar-ability doesn't matter as much as the spark, the soul the person exhibits, the love the audience feels. Yeah!

Much thanks to Charles for hipping me to Barbara Lynn and for sending me this video. 

Palmyra (Tadmor). Pillars of colonnade, showing brackets for statues, photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Hugh MacLeod has an interesting way to describe how really successful people get stuff done. He feels that they refuse to hide behind what he calls pillars, and can therefore execute ideas with ease.

Pillars are things that we think can help us be successful in our creative endeavors, but really just get in the way. The danger is that when more pillars than needed are allowed on the playing field, lots of energy is wasted on them.

Consider a wall, filled to the brim of beautiful vintage guitars. Pre-CBS Fenders, Gibsons that are at least 30 years old, and Martins from the 1800's. Would you feel okay having a wall like that to yourself? Are you salivating at the thought?

Remember this: all you need is one guitar to write thousands of songs, not a wall of them. Less is more. Or in the wise words of Hugh MacLeod...

Successful people, artists and non-artists alike, are very good at spotting pillars. They're very good at doing without them. Even more important, once they've spotted a pillar, they're very good at quickly getting rid of it.

Ignore Everybody, page 45,

What pillars could you do away with? What extras are getting in your way? Eliminating them might be terrifying, but the liberation that comes from giving them up can be breathtaking.

Any project counts. Professional, creative, or personal projects. Anything. It could be learning the trumpet, trying out watercolors, putting together a power-point slideshow, or even taking a random photo of flowers and sharing it with everyone.

Ahem.

A very common reason why most people delay starting a new creative project (including yours truly—I am not beyond feeling the fear of starting) is the assumption that everything must be good in order to justify the effort. 

Sometimes it's nice to be surprised, but if the result of a creative project doesn't turn out to be good, it can be wildly frustrating. We would think we were stupid for wasting our times on a bad such-and-such.

I might be in the minority about this, but why not aim to be satisfied instead? After all, good and bad are both judgments, and there is little incentive for us to continue to get better at a project after we label our work as such.

Being satisfied, or even dissatisfied, is different. If what we have created is satisfying, we'll savor our efforts, and sooner or later we'll let go so we can move onto the next project. What if what we create is unsatisfying? We could try to make it satisfying, or just try a different route to see if it turns out better. Or we could just as easily abandon it without a second thought.

Working to be satisfied seems a teeny-weeny-little-bit less harsh. Instead of the final product being a product to be viewed and judged, we could just aim for our efforts to be be satisfying to look at, to mull over, to gaze at, to listen to...

...to enjoy.

According to Shaun McNiff, author of the wonderful book Trust the Process, a healthy regard for the beginning of any new creative idea is incredibly necessary. 

The most rudimentary exercise for those wishing to experiment with stepping into the unknown, involves painting, drawing, moving, writing, or making sounds without any goal in mind. If you begin to work exclusively for the sake of expressing yourself, you have begun to practice "negative capability."

Perhaps you have experienced negative capability before? It's the capability to tolerate doing something completely new and not knowing if it's a good idea or not. It could mean starting a painting from scratch, writing a song from nothing, or starting guitar for the very first time. It can feel really exhilarating, or absolutely horrifying. As Shaun McNiff points out, there really isn't any goal in mind except expression of the self. That takes time, but it's do-able. Therefore, once a person gets through the awkward first moments and finds a rhythm in a pursuit, continuing on gets easier.

In other words, well begun is half done.

Many artists and musicians are very comfortable with the process of creating something from scratch. Most of the time, the song never turns out the way the musician had in mind. The painting has a creative spirit all of it's own when a person is okay with being surprised with the result. Dancing, as I have mentioned many times before, gets easier when you just jump in. Hell, you never know where you'll end up. We all could use more of an ability to just let go, jump in. All the more so if we are dying to try something new.

So, what does it take to have an unconditional regard for what we are creating, even if we have no idea if we'll like it later? What does it take to develop "negative capability?" I don't know about other people, but I know I know what works for me. I need a healthy respect for even the most frustrating failures, and a deep faith that the right (and most satisfying) answer will be made clear, eventually.

There is no end point that anyone can definitively say, "Now, I know how to play guitar." So why create one?

If there is no end point, no goal (except for maybe, "I'm going to try it out and see what happens"), all you have to do is be open to experiencing the process. It could be like discovering a vast meadow upon emerging from the woods, only to plunge back into the woods at the end of the meadow. It would seem that the best way to find the meadow is not to expect it. It's better not to, because learning can be tough on occasion.

Sometimes, we need goals to help us be accountable. Imagining a goal and passionately working to get there is good because we can measure ourselves. I think goal-setting is great if we are very confident with our abilities in an area of expertise. If programming comes easy to you, then it might be best to have the goal of getting a new app in the app store. It could motivate you.

However, I can't imagine goal-setting to be great for things you just want to experiment with. 

If you were to start learning guitar from scratch tomorrow, wouldn't it be limiting to say that you only wanted to play like John Petrucci of Dream Theater when there are millions of great guitar players out there who are just as good as he is? Isn't it also going to be tough to keep on practicing with that giant looming over you? It would to me. The ruts that I would get in would be super frustrating.

Now, if you were to start learning guitar from scratch tomorrow, wouldn't it be delightful to eventually realize you have a talent for playing the leads of John Petrucci, and that you really enjoyed doing it? 

Sometimes, it's more fun to be surprised. It's delightful.

I've kept up with this humble blog for more than two years now. My original purpose was, quite frankly, to score higher results on the Google machine for Austin guitar lessons. Blogging about guitar exclusively is fun, but the concept of guitar is just so, well... limited. Just because guitar is fun to play doesn't really mean I want to spend this entire blog talking about it, anymore. Besides, I'd rather have mystery than mastery. Mastery is boring as hell.

I have been thinking about how blogs can sometimes spark community participation. It's just one of many ways to getting a free exchange of ideas, or testing out theories and getting feedback. It's always good to explore ideas or even hobbies that are new to us, and they can help us have a more complete education with guitar too. If you have taken any lessons with me, you probably already know that I have some intense interests outside of guitar. I don't mind sharing many of my interests because I've found that the more I open up and talk about them in lessons, the more solid of a relationship I get with the people I teach. Lessons are mostly about guitar, but it seems to me that sharing what I am up to outside of guitar has only been a good thing. That's the direction I will go with this blog now.

I will not be forgetting about guitar on this blog. Instead, I am going to experiment by sharing the stuff that I gravitate to in addition to thoughts on music and guitar. I may throw ideas around. I may test out tidbits of thoughts here and there. I may share the results of my experiments to be more productive. I may just share things that are just intensely creative. I can't think of a reason not to share really cool stuff that other people out there are doing, especially if they are the unsung creative types. This is not about Google rankings anymore. The game has changed, and so have I.

In the future, expect more variety with the same amount of grammatical errors. I don't care. Ideas are pretty important even if my grammar sucks. You don't have to pitch in, but I'd love to hear your thoughts. Tell me loud and clear!