G U I T A R D E D !

Avatar is only the second movie I’ve ever walked out on (the first being Napoleon Dynamite).

After ninety minutes of eye candy I realized I had been waiting and waiting for something to happen. It wasn’t a bad movie, per se, but one would think one of the most expensive movies of all time would be enthralling and rapturous, not flat. Perhaps I’d have made it all the way if it weren’t 162 minutes long (I only made it through 143 of those). Though ADD can’t possibly be the answer – I have joyfully sat through many three-hour Pat Metheny Group performances. Heck, I watched three hours of student plays at the New School the other day without checking my watch once. And I’m left wondering how all this applies to music. I’m reminded of the YouTube void.

Sigourney Weaver in Avatar.

A good friend (and great guitar player) and I regularly lament YouTube’s titillating ability to suck us in with clip after clip of musical acrobatics from across the globe. Most musicians I know get sucked in regularly – no matter how many videos you watch, there’s always one more “related video” you haven’t seen (perhaps some fancy new whammy-bar technique that will change your life). While I truly appreciate the occasional video-find that has lasting meaning for me, most of it reminds me of Avatar’s world: flashy and interesting, but not much more. Techniques, techniques, techniques.

A friend recently asked, half-jokingly, about transcriptions of Jeff Beck’s playing. “How do they notate those bends?” he asked. I responded I had no clue, but it sure seemed like a waste of time. It’s definitely not the kind of thing you can learn from Guitar Techniques magazine. I’m sure there are plenty of ways to “Supercharge Your Playing” available from such a source, but squeezing every last bit of life out of note is something that can’t be taught. I once asked Vic Juris how he did some sort of technique I’d seen him do on a gig and he responded, “Play seven thousand gigs and you’ll get it.” That experience is something that can’t be learned.

Similarly, my father always said there’s an art, a science, and a business to everything. The science and the business are the easy parts. They’re like the guitar techniques: learnable, manageable, and quantifiable. They just take work. The other one’s the elusive one. The ‘art’ is the part of the game musicians usually talk around. Even in school, teachers rarely talk directly to the heart of that subject. But perhaps that’s why Colonel Henry Rutgers (my alma mater’s namesake) said, “Don’t let your studies get in the way of your education.” And perhaps why metaphors about art are so often employed. It’s easier to talk around the thing than to speak directly to it (like Judaism’s “G-d”). There’s also something so precious (if not holy) about the art aspect of music, that words might kill it. If we could really name it and really call it something, it might die. Perhaps we just have to face it.

But that aspect of music can drive you crazy. I know one person in particular who, for the most part, stopped playing altogether because of it. You can practice and practice and practice, but no amount of time will necessitate advancement in the ‘art’ side of things. Surely there’s a correlation between the amount of effort put in and the results you get. But the amount of time between effort and results can be a bit maddening. Ralph Bowen (a known super-practicer) once gave a mini-lecture to an ensemble I was in about not always receiving immediate rewards for the amount of work you put in; music involves lots of effort without necessary reward. But he did say that it all led somewhere, it just might not be clear while you’re on your way there.

At least with writing, it seems a bit easier to figure out where one is headed.  Over dinner recently, a friend passed on some simple advice about the craft of writing. “It’s the story, stupid.” I wish James Cameron had been at dinner with us. And I wish I could come up with such a simple answer for music – perhaps it’s just keeping the faith that the road we’re on is headed somewhere.