Rocksteady

....the kiddies are doing my head in! There's only so much you can show seven year olds the C major scale without wanting to flip your lid and go screaming running down the street tearing your hair out....but I keep my patience....don't get me wrong, I enjoy teaching one on one and just as well, but just lately I've been feeling it a bit....
Practice is in remedial stages at the moment, trying to think around those barriers that for the first time ever I can see and feel quite clearly and distinctly....after Saturday's revelatory experience, various things are clicking in but the transmission, the signal, is still unclear and inconsistent. It's just as well Hanon is dead cause I woulda killed him by now, but then I put my own chromatic thing on it so I guess I'm to blame.....been practicing a lot of technique lately, fully knowing that technique is only as good as the message one wants to convey. And what might that be, pray tell?.....
Bit of a side note here - couple of books that have helped me on my path. 'Free Play' by Steven Nachmanovich (think I mentioned that one previously) and 'Everyday Zen' by Charlotte Joko Beck - the main thing I got out of this one is what is it SPECIFICALLY that holds you back? Identify it's details, and then you can overcome it......
Additionally, I'd like to put in an honourable mention for the album I'm listening to right now, Monty Alexander and Ernest Ranglin....after a long day of self-centred musician worries, I chuck this on and ivryting arie, nahmean?.....
For the first time ever I feel as though I know exactly what it is I want to do with the music and how to go about it. I'm just hoping that there are enough days left in my life to be able to get to where I'd like to get to. And there are still a couple of blanks in the equation. The big one is what. Still so bewildered by music and all it's forms, it's history, where it's been, where it could go, and what parts of it to take to call my own. Gotta start some where, right? Where might that be, pray tell?....it's the practicalities that get me too, continuing an intense study of an artform that disappears into thin air as soon as you create it while paying tax upon bill upon......
As always, it BAKES me that for the work I've put in, I'm probably never gonna earn a decent living off performing alone. And what bakes me just as much if not more is the thought of the guys who I know, some of them good friends, who have put TEN TIMES more work than I, who are far superior musicians than I, and they've got just as much struggle to deal with. No-one's got it easy in this business.
But then there's that little teaser, that thing that comes along out of the blue, that keeps you on it. 'We live in hope,' said an older muso I've played with recently, 'it's who we are.' More on that little story later.....
It's such a ridiculous form of existence, the carrot that disappears and reappears when you least expect it, where giving up and total committment aren't at opposite ends of the spectrum, they're in fact side by side, maybe even touching, like parallel universes.
'No, you've got it all wrong,' said jazz piano great John Hicks when drilled by students at a workshop about how to make a living after study, 'playing Jazz IS the reward.'
Right now, with my girlfriendless existence, playing Hanon after coming home from gigs, at least there's red wine, right?....

By the way, did my first gig on controller keyboard last night! at a local pub just up the road. After the Nord Electro arrived about a week ago, got a call for a dodgy pub trio thing for not much, so I hoiked my mini-amp into the backpack, Nord in a side sling bag thingy, and carried my four octave non-weighted controller keyboard (with more dials and sliders than you could poke a stick at) WITH ONE HAND as I strolled up the hill toward the pub. We were parked right on the bar and it was total blag session and I loved it. The Nord gave me all the fatness required, and best of all, at the end of the night I caught the bus home EASILY! No bazooka-carrying scarecrow on some military exercise changing tube lines across greater London.....heppy heppy daze!....