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 

A lot of my focus these days has been on my examination pieces, which i feel is good and even though I am not spending as much time on more contemporary stuff I believe (and i can only speak from experience) that without even really playing other genres much, once i've completed my exam my playing will have improved across all styles. You might be thinking that it is just in my head and that having a certificate has a psychological effect on me and therefore I feel i have improved when I haven't really. Well of course the piece of paper with my Grade on it in reality means nothing, but the process whereby I have gone to obtain this piece of paper is where the real progress is. And somehow this art of practising and playing classical guitar is universally beneficial to all other styles of guitar. Now the link to acoustic finger/chicken picking wouldn't seem unreasonable as classical guitar is always with the fingers and thus fine motor skills are developed and improved. But in terms of using a pick and playing chords and melodies common to jazz and more contemporary styles and often contrary to classical - now thats where I am confused as to how I am able to improve without playing much of it.

I am not trying to label the classical guitar as the superior style, but I am somehow intrinsically convinced that it is by far the best grounding one could have in terms of a guitar background. I mentioned in an earlier blog that one should try to learn both classical and jazz guitar, I am not going back on that but still the classical discipline has this solid foundation that I can't ignore, that i don't see (or haven't yet seen) in any other style.

Anyway, I've got a few things due for uni so fitting in time for guitar won't be easy, but I should have another video up in two weeks so check back soon :)

Jesse

http://www.jesseguitar.com

http://www.youtube.com/user/JesseGuitar07

Winery Gig

So as I said last week I had my gig at the winery with my old guitar teacher and a couple of other guys. It went really well I must say. There was a great response and a possibility of even another one in a couple of months so I really can’t complain. 

Even though it went well, there are always parts that I wish could have sounded better. In the practice just before the show I felt the pieces were sounding great, the dynamic, tone, speed, but then as I started i began to think to much. I was thinking, how it was sounding out in the audience, how my positioning was, what other people were thinking and so on. All of this obviously detracted from my concentration of the actual music and naturally I became a little nervous and consequently fumbled here and there. Guess that all comes with experience. I also found my guitar was too quiet in the mix and I got a little feedback here and there because of my positioning. Sound and mixing is another art all in itself and one I am yet to perfect. You might have the song down back to front, inside out, left right and center but if you don’t mix it right people aren’t going to appreciate it the same way you do.

When i rocked up to the venue, the chair they gave me was a little high and quite uncomfortable and I think bothered my playing a little. Of course I am not going to blame the chair for any mistakes, but it is just something that can distract you every now and then and add a little bit more to that uneasiness. I reckon i’m going to bring my own from now on as I think there is enough to worry about already.

All in all it was a great night, great food, didn’t get to try the wine but apparently that was great too. I’m looking forward to the next one and to start working on some new material. 

I am in the process of getting the video off my mates camera so keep checking back here for when I get it up in the next couple of days. Hopefully tomorrow!

Thanks for reading

Jesse 
http://www.youtube.com/user/JesseGuitar07 
http://www.jesseguitar.com 

play live on an Italian radio station

Had the great chance to play live on an Italian radio station with my old guitar teacher last Monday. We played 3 duet pieces. A Scarlatti Sonata, a Piazzola Tango, and The Millers Dance. These are the same duos that I’ll be playing this Saturday and that I’ll hopefully be able to video. Playing live in the studio was a great experience and although you still get nervous, it is a different kind of pressure to that of playing in a concert on a stage. The environment is more enclosed and you don’t have the sense of hundreds of eyes fixed on you but the pressure to play perfectly is still there and is still something I am yet to overcome. It seems to me any experience is good experience, and that one should try to play in as many different environments to try and be conditioned to the point where anywhere feels as comfortable as their own bedroom.

I guess I want to get to the point where I can sit and play in front of an audience and feel like I am sitting in my favorite chair at home. Where nothing is distracting me, where my surroundings are but mere images, where I can simply enjoy what I’m playing and nothing else. I’ll be honest, yeah sure it is great having people watch you and complementing you on your playing but the place where I get most satisfaction, the place where I truly play for the soul (or whatever you want to call it) is at home. And if I could bring that mentality everywhere with me, to make any place feel like home with my guitar - I would consider that a main goal of my playing career. I think once you’ve reached that level, the audience starts to realise too and that’s when you become one of the greats. That’s when it is no longer about technical side of things, not about the scales, not about sharps and flats, but that’s when it is all about music and the transcendental. 

In the mean time I guess I am to push my self to get involved in all kinds of performances, ones I want to do, ones I don’t want to do. Solo ones, ensemble ones etc.. You can never get enough practice as they say.

Jesse L 

http://www.youtube.com/user/JesseGuitar07

http://www.jesseguitar.com

started with the jazz stuff.

Sorry i didn’t manage to get a blog up last week everything has just suddenly started to pile up. Got a gig at a winery doing a duo and quartet thing which should be pretty sweet although it means i’ve got to learn about 14 new pieces in two weeks.. I’m getting there. Slowly. We’re doing a bit of classical, spanish and flamenco and hopefully i’ll be able to get a good live recording of it up on my page once we’ve done the gig.

I’ve been looking into a few things lately concerning music, trying to get out some tabs but its taking longer than I thought. Got a lot of ideas for music as usual but its just hard turning these concepts into actual music. I find using the loop pedal is a great way to get ideas down and refine them but then again it all changes once you add drums bass and synth into it. Still working on jazz guitar a bit, i find its pretty useful in writing and everything, go a lot more dynamic and variation since i started with the jazz stuff.

Been looking into the lute vihuela as well. Considering getting into some of that repertoire but i don't know if that's gonna hinder my current stuff. It's good to know a bit of everything but as soon as you start too much in one area your taking away time from another. So its probably good to go everything in something and then only something in everything. I would try everything in everything but I doubt that is humanly possible. The only problem is to figure out which style i should invest the most in. Ah well something to consider.

Jesse  

  PS: I just updated my website and i put up more pictures  :)  Photography by Ben Mulligan  here is link for you!
http://031cae9.namesecurehost.com/jcpic.htm 

Stolen Strat

So this weeks had it’s ups and down. The biggest down obviously was my 1998 Deluxe Stratocaster which was nicked from my car in the middle of the night last saturday. I admit it was my fault. i thought i locked my car but the remote on the keys isn’t always acurate and the next morning i wake and my boot is open and the strat gone. However they managed to leave my amp and wallet for me which was nice of them..... So yeah i’ve been to the cops, local pawn shops, and there is pretty much nothing i can do because i don;t have the serial. Some of you probably thinking ‘what an idiot’ for not keeping the serial number but i guess its one of those things you don;t think you’ll need until something like this happens. I contacted the store i got it from, but since it was a traded guitar they don’t keep the serial number so not a great result to say the least. 

At the same time it’s not that I don’t have enough guitars to use, it was more the fact that this was my favorite electric guitar and any guitarist can sympathize with me in that when you find the right guitar, it grows on you and you grow on it. Not that I am a very materialistic person but it was a valuable possession of mine as most of my guitars are and one I will surely miss. 

The truth is I am annoyed, as most people would be, but as I look around at the events going on in world today my frustration tends to cease. I might have lost my guitar. But people in Japan and New Zealand have lost even more. Some have lost everything. And people lose their lives friends and family everyday in all places around the world. And it is not only Japan and New Zealand that are suffering, it is people everywhere!. Murder, slavery, sex slavery, child labour, sweat shops, poverty, famine, the list goes on and on. Yes I know you’ve all heard it before but sometimes we can forget the things we don’t hear about and sometimes it is as if they don’t matter. I know this is not the usual stuff I rant on about, but I guess this week has just been a bit different so hopefully I haven’t lost most of you. 

I’ve the learnt the very simple lesson of double checking my car is locked since last saturday, but I think there is a lot more to learn from people around the world. In December last year I visited an orphanage in Myanmar to really experience the conditions of a third world country and hopefully be able to help out the kids there in some way. The irony was, more than anything the children there actually helped me. They helped me see that they don’t need computers, cars, games, technology, luxuries. Some of these kids were the happiest kids I have ever seen in my life, and their appreciation for anything you did was purely honest and genuine. It was extremely challenging as well as amazing. These kids value everything they have, which materially is close to nothing compared to 1st world country standards. But they, from what I could see had everything immaterially, spiritually, morally, whatever you want to call it. They were content. And if they could be, then I have no excuse. This is not to say the same goes for Japan and New Zealand where I cannot even fathom what the are experiencing but I guess if your reading this you are pretty lucky, you have the internet, you are connected to the world, you have a home and a place to sleep and eat. It’s not that we should be carefree and disregard things that are taken from us and not learn from stupid mistakes (like myself), I guess it’s more of... in your grief or discontent it’s always good to gain a little bit of perspective.

It was a long one but thanks for reading.

Jesse   

here is my guitar:( luck i got this on the video:)