Re: Serious discussion about pot & looping/music

[Kelly Coyle <kellycoyle@earthlink.net>]

We should all, perhaps, limit ourselves to our own experience when speaking of this! At least after that thread.

The guys in my band prefer to play altered. I don't. For me, echoing Richard here, marijuana gets me more "in" to myself, inflates my sense of importance, causes me to overvalue my contribution. The POINT of my music to me is to get me OUT of my own head, identity, ego, and into the sound thing. I find that the drugs make it impossible to do that, while (at the same time) make me think that I'm doing great. But, you know, it seems to work for the other guys.










--On Friday, May 23, 2003 7:09 AM -0700 Richard Zvonar <zvonar@zvonar.com> wrote:

> At 12:16 PM +0200 5/23/03, Stuart Wyatt wrote:
>> I would be very interested to share my ideas about pot and music, 
>> and would be very interested to hear other people's experiences on 
>> the subject.
> 
> Speaking only for my personal experience with marijuana and music, I
> found that getting moderately stoned would facilitate a certain state of
> awareness that was useful for composing. I found it easy to "relax into"
> a focus on the sound of the music and the act of playing, and I found
> that in some ways my creativity seemed to be enhanced. I wouldn't say
> that "pot makes you more creative," but that relaxation and focus
> certainly do.
> 
> Before I ever got into playing while stoned I made a regular practice of
> listening while stoned. In these situations the effects were even more
> pronounced and included an increase in visualization of the music.
> Without the necessity of performing I could relax more deeply and place
> more of my awareness on following the details of the sound and in
> "mapping" the sounds to an internal visual "score."
> 
> I did not find that getting stoned and playing with other people was such
> a great success. Unfortunately, I am one of those for whom marijuana
> (particularly certain "heavier" varieties such as Columbian) leads to
> self-consciousness even unto paranoia. I also believe that getting stoned
> can foster an inflated sense of significance, so that one's creations
> seem at the time to be more brilliant than they do in retrospect. This
> could spell trouble in a performance situation, and in my bands we always
> made it a rule not to smoke until after the gig. The same thing went for
> drinking alcohol, though we were more relaxed about that.
> 
> I've also noticed some interesting effects while playing while stoned on
> LSD, though I did that only once. I felt that my awareness extended into
> other parts of my nervous system, beyond the cerebral cortex. In
> particular, while playing, I felt conscious of activity in my brain stem.
> I practiced Harrison's "Here Comes the Sun" while in this state and was
> impressed by how well this psychedelic rehearsal "took" and showed
> lasting results.
> 
> Interestingly, my guitar teacher would also stress the importance of
> focusing awareness on the brain stem while practicing - he told me this
> about a year after my LSD experience, and without my telling him about it.
> -- 
> 
> ______________________________________________________________
> Richard Zvonar, PhD
> (818) 788-2202
> http://www.zvonar.com
> http://RZCybernetics.com
> 
>  



---
www.endtimequartet.com