RE: Tactics for Circumventing Musical Ruts

["William Walker" <billwalker@looppool.info>]

Actually, Ralph said, "Know what you Know", If memory serves me, which 
means
the same thing. Ralph is a pithy guy, as well as being an astoundingly
brilliant musician. I never got to ask him how he deals with creative ruts.
Who knows,  maybe he never has them!.
Bill

-----Original Message-----
From: loop.pool [mailto:looppool@cruzio.com]
Sent: Friday, June 11, 2004 5:27 PM
To: LOOPERS DELIGHT (posting)
Subject: Re: Tactics for Circumventing Musical Ruts


LOL,   I started this thread out because I was in a musical rut.

Many of the excellent suggestions that have been made are ideas that I have
used
in the past to move out of past ruts, but forgotten.

 Isn't it amazing that we sometimes have to keep re-learning things we
already know (or is that just me?  <blush).

Anyway,  as a music teacher I'm constantly suggesting things to students 
who
are in ruts.
One of the best pieces of advice that I have given is the one single piece
of advice that I have not
been listening to:

"Sometimes it is best to radically reduce your options and just work on
perfecting one small thing."

I remember distinctly that in our early years playing music together, my
brother and I went to see one
of our heroes,  Ralph Towner play.    At the end of of the show Bill went 
up
to Ralph (and please forgive me, Bill
for mangling this story: you have a much more accurate memory than I do) 
and
said, in essence,
"I've learned all this theory and all of these chords and
rhythms..............what would you suggest that I learn next?"

What Ralph said just astonished me and changed both of us.   He said,
"Perfect what you already know."
He went on to explain how 'acquisition oriented' many musicians are, yet
they never really get really good at any one thing.
I am guilty of that a tremendous amount.

Towards that end, I've been trying to learn Ableton's Live, Cubase SX 
(after
having never done midi sequencing in all my years),
Cycling 74's Max/MSP and Pluggo and all the new devices in FLStudio in the
past couple of months while trying to finish my next CD.
I've also been working through the MI book of modern chordal theory on
piano.

I got so damned wound up in being overwhelmed by the learning curve that I
couldn't see the forest for the trees.

Anyway, this thread has got me back on track..................thanks!

Rick