Guitar Makers Festival

Was quite an experience performing at the guitar makers festival. Got to play some great guitars, steel strings and classical. Watched some amazing performers showcase their own works and it really gave me some insight into the music that no one really ever hears. There is so much to the music world that we don't hear about or know exists that I think we are missing out on some great stuff. I guess it is because these artists don't belong to your typical mainstream radio group, and are not run by a producing company telling them what to write and how to do it. Everyone there was playing for themselves and in my opinion that's the best way to do it. 

I got my friends to film some of the festival and I got a mix of stuff that I'm thinking of putting up. Of course once i get the video of me and Sergio doing the Piazzola Tango i'll upload that one but in the meantime was thinking of just putting up some clips of the Allan Bull guitar I played. Was an amazing instrument, beautifully balanced and a real sweet tone. Was kind of sad coming back to my factory guitar but hopefully I'll get my hands on one of them one day.

Check back here tomorrow to see a clip of it :) 

Jesse Liang

Not Enough time?

So the end of my uni semester is approaching soon, which means well, exams and all, but the good news is I’ll have a nice break to really get some stuff down. I’ve also been lucky enough to be asked to play at the Melbourne Guitar Maker’s Festival this Saturday evening. I’m doing a duet with my old Guitar Mentor (Sergio Ercole) again and we’ll be performing Piazzola’s Verano Porteno. I’ve heard great things about this festival, there are many great guitarists showcasing their stuff and their guitars so if your in Melbourne drop by and check it out (i’ll add a link below so you can check it out for yourself).

Call me pessimistic but lately I’ve been feeling like there really isn’t enough time. Not enough time to be able to learn everything I want to. Not enough time to master classical guitar, acoustic guitar and work full time eventually. One day I won’t be here anymore, and what would my time have accomplished? Perhaps I learn everything after I’ve left this place, or maybe I don’t learn anything at all. I chose not to study music because I believed that I could do both. Study Planning and Music. I still believe I can do both, but its really not as easy as I thought. These days there is so much to learn about everything that it is impossible for one man to master everything. Go back 2500 years ago, a guy like Plato was considered a master of all disciplines. MAthematician, Scientist, Philosopher etc, but since then science itself has become so specific it is beyond comprehension. And believe me I did not think there could be so much to think about in terms of planning either. There is just not enough time to do it all.

So if in the big picture of things there is not enough time, what is our time meant to be used for? Well relatively speaking a lot of things can be done in our short time and there are things which we can’t exactly take away with us but things that we can leave behind.

People have left behind music, ideas to change the world, questions to pursue. So are we to try and make the world a better place? Can music play a part in that? Music, being such a universal language one would think it could play a part. But exactly how I am yet to figure out.

Jesse 

  

Music made or discovered?

In our known universe there are various laws that govern it. I used to think that maths and all these formulas were something that someone came up with in a classroom one day.  However overtime it seems that maths and science has been more of a discovery than an invention. Clever minds working out how things work rather than inventing them. Sure we came up with the representation of it in the form of our numbers, but the actual laws behind the math have always been there (though I know many would debate this) and it has been those clever minds that have found these underlying principles on which our known universe functions.

I might have lost some of you already but there is a musical relation I’ve been thinking about. 

Do we invent or discover music?

Well if we think about it, music is made from sounds, sounds made from particles hitting one another, and there are various frequencies of these sounds that create what we know to be different pitches and notes. So I guess from a materialist’s point of view music is just a specific order of a bunch of frequencies of vibrating particles. That point aside for another day , I wonder if all Bach works already ‘existed’ before he wrote them. Was he just clever enough to find the right mixture of sounds to create his master pieces? And what makes the bunch of notes he put together any better or worse than the notes mozart put together? 

Without making things too confusing I think there are a set amount of frequencies as far as we know. We discovered these sound waves and vibrating particles but we do invent different ways of organizing and expressing these sounds. So perhaps the greats of music have been those who have found a unique way of expressing these sound waves in a perfect balance of melody,  rhythm, dynamic, and artistic influence. I really am not conclusive on any of this. Perhaps more thought

Jesse