Question for Buddy Emmons (and others)

Skip Mertz · Post by **Skip Mertz** » 6 Nov 2003 5:13 pm

Bruce, I cant count as high as the bal. in your checkbook goes!

Al Marcus · Post by **Al Marcus** » 6 Nov 2003 5:31 pm

It seems to me that Carl Dixon and David Donald brought up some good points to think about.

It would appear that Creativity in music could be the result of what you are exposed to in life, and that would include a certain amount of reading??....al

------------------
My Website..... www.cmedic.net/~almarcus/

Rick Aiello · Post by **Rick Aiello** » 6 Nov 2003 6:31 pm

Those who excel, I mean really excel at something, are usually quite single-minded people.

I still think about this article that Chas Smith posted ...

Savant for a Day.

------------------

www.horseshoemagnets.com [This message was edited by Rick Aiello on 06 November 2003 at 06:33 PM.]

Jeff Evans · Post by **Jeff Evans** » 6 Nov 2003 6:36 pm

I'd like to see the Dilly list, Buck, if you don't mind.

Thanks,

Jeff

Stephen Gambrell · Post by **Stephen Gambrell** » 6 Nov 2003 6:40 pm

"But I think your point did infer something I agree with..."
Uh, John, I think Donny's point IMPLIED something. Sorry to correct you, but it's a pet peeve of mine

[This message was edited by Stephen Gambrell on 06 November 2003 at 06:40 PM.]

James Morehead · Post by **James Morehead** » 6 Nov 2003 7:38 pm

I'm not sure whether or not reading will help my playing, so I play it safe. I play steel radio WHILE I read

I do suspect that reading helps develope and excersise your learning skills(depending naturally, on the content in which you read), thus should allow you to learn music easier. Just my edicated guess.

Rainer Hackstaette · Post by **Rainer Hackstaette** » 7 Nov 2003 4:26 am

I have played with an incredibly talented guitarist who could barely decipher the writing on a cornflakes box, and a bass player with a master's degree in musical theory and composition who stumbled through a walking bass riff in C major like a drunk on his way home.

If reading helps my music, would you recommend that I start easy with "Superman" or plunge head-first into "War and Peace"?

And would jogging further my understanding of the Theory of Relativity?

Dennis Detweiler · Post by **Dennis Detweiler** » 7 Nov 2003 4:38 am

Another thread stated, if you go to a gig hungry and horny you play better? If so, read Playboy and skip dinner.

Buck Dilly · Post by **Buck Dilly** » 7 Nov 2003 8:08 am

The one music book is:
Effortless Mastery: Liberating the Master Musician Within -Kenny Werner
Other books:
The Toa Te Ching-Lao Tsu
Man's Search for Meaning- Victor Frankl
The Road Less Traveled- M.Scott Peck
The seven spiritual laws of success-Deepak Chopra
The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living, The Dalai Lama & Howard Cutler
The Power of Myth- Moyers & Campbell
Alcoholics Anonymous (this is not for everyone, but its wisdom can benefit anyone)
A New Guide to Rational Living- Albert Ellis

I offer these not in any particular order. I have not read them all completely. I think the Kenny Werner book is amazing. It deals with the cognitive problems artists deal with, how we defeat ourselves with crippling self talk, and ways to overcome it.
Any blanket statement denying the help books can offer an artist is foolhardy.

Don McClellan · Post by **Don McClellan** » 7 Nov 2003 8:47 am

Thank you Buck.

David L. Donald · Post by **David L. Donald** » 2 Dec 2003 2:22 pm

Well I can see my dyslexia was stronger the other day than usual, or I was just to busy to do a much needed edit, that I normally would have done. I wasn't reading as much at that time..
I will leave it as the reality of that day.

Al M. and Don Mc., thank you for observing what, I believe, I was succesfully to saying.

i.e. if you exercise your mind, it is stronger, and it can be applied to any pursuit with more possibilities of neural connections.

Reading is no substitute for woodshedding,
but when you are practicing, you are also making neural, and neural / muscle connections and reinforcing them in your master organ ; the brain.

There is an old saying "Use it or lose it."
This applies to muscle mass and tone,
as well as the neural connections that control it's function. Similar to retraining your self after a stroke... (god forbid it's neccesity)

I know if I don't sight read classical music for the summer I have to relearn the connections, but later in the season I see and hear the music from the page. This is reading characters that represent musical sounds.

Words in a book, whether text or braille, represent sounds, and cause our minds to recreate those sounds and /or concepts internally.
Why is this any different than musical notation or TAB? We all use that, from time to time, to get better on our instruments.

A great writer can have meter, rhythmn and a sublime lyricism in their writing, just like music,
that can inspire a singer to sing the words. Or another to recreate those word's melody and rhythmn on an instrument.

A dry physics text is less likely to inspire melody than say Chaucer or Sondheim, but it still exercises our brains.

When a broadway musical show is created there are 3 main elements.
The score and the choreography of course... but the other thing is called
The Book...
hmmm, wonder why?
[This message was edited by David L. Donald on 03 December 2003 at 12:47 AM.]

Nicholas Dedring · Post by **Nicholas Dedring** » 12 Dec 2003 10:53 am

There are studies that have shown that listening to Mozart for three hours on the morning of an exam had a positive impact on students in a University setting. I find (some forms more than others) of music to make my mind function more crisply in an analytical context.

If that's the case, especially for something as mentally demanding as playing an instrument, that their might well be substantial benefits to doing a workout with your mind on a regular basis.

I've also heard that doing basic math in your head (multiplication of multi-digit numbers was the suggestion I saw) can help people with learning disbilities and certain mental health conditions (anxiety, depression etc.) see benefits in mood and intellectual function... who knows? The mind is the final frontier of our understanding of ourselves.

John Bechtel · Post by **John Bechtel** » 12 Dec 2003 12:18 pm

I know a fellow who played Accordian, and also did a lot of reading, which eventually made a perfect gentleman out of him! {A perfect gentleman is someone who can play an Accordian, but; doesn't!}

“BJ” Just Kidding! (At least not in public)

------------------
“Big John” Bechtel
http://community.webtv.net/KeoniNui/BigJohnBechtels

Larry Miller · Post by **Larry Miller** » 12 Dec 2003 2:50 pm

....The Eric West Chronicles does it for me

Dr. Hugh Jeffreys · Post by **Dr. Hugh Jeffreys** » 12 Dec 2003 3:13 pm

Why not spend all that time READING VARIOUS MUSICS? This would be a DIRECT approach! HJ

Miguel e Smith · Post by **Miguel e Smith** » 13 Dec 2003 12:30 pm

I think Hugh is right on if you are really wanting to learn more about music itself. Anything you do good for your mind certainly won't hurt as far as giving the brain some exercise. However, reading non-music topics could be one diversion for some people from thinking too hard about music. I laid-off steel for the biggest part of 10-years and several folks said my playing was much better afterwards (although I wouldn't recommend giving it up as a means to that end).

Mike P.S.; I wish there was an easy and simple task I could do (i.e.; taking a magic pill) that would make me better. Kimmons Wilson once said "The key to success is only working a half a day. Which half you choose to work is your choice...the first 12 hours or the second 12." Beyond listening and practicing and (hopefully) working with really good musicians, I'm stumped on how to get there.[This message was edited by Miguel e Smith on 13 December 2003 at 12:38 PM.]

David L. Donald · Post by **David L. Donald** » 13 Dec 2003 4:27 pm

I'm glad this topic continues to be added to.
Even if I seem to be a disenting opinion.

Hugh is quite right reading musics will improve your music. Especially if you work out some of it on the physical instrument.

But before we play any two notes consecuatively our brain has to make some connections to make it happen.

What is the source for this type of melodo-rhythmic connection.

I think my observations run to a deeper or sub level of musical input.
I can see music in a well put together paragraph.
And song writers have to also.
As well as being the masters of the ultra short story form.

The great writers were noted for their lyricism, sense of meter, and modualtions of emotional tone.
Music is an off shoot of the voice in song, spoken and written word.

So for music I ask what came first?

The humming of an illiterate before the spoken word.

The spoken word as communication of emotions and social information.
Such as the traveling balladeur singing tales of other parts of the land. The music in subordination to the tale. As well as helping set its emotional tone.

The rythmic banging on some object to communicate a sense of meter like a galleys drum beat ; row... row... row..
The men singing to that beat. clearly a blues too.

A book of poetical verse in iambic meter

or a nice classical sonanta perfectly notated and ready for the orchastra.

Before all music was the word... except for the person humming to themselves before they knew it could be words.

Food for thought... such as are words.

I have studied both anthropology and psyco-biology, and both have lead to this train of thought pertaining to musical learning and the brain.

Jim Cohen · Post by **Jim Cohen** » 13 Dec 2003 4:42 pm

I think a lot of it boils down to "pattern recognition". That's why, I believe, many other arts and sciences can fuel our musical abilities (and vice versa). Much of math is about pattern recognition, hence the correspondence between math and music. Much of art is about pattern recognition (else it would just be random) and spending time in other artistic pursuits also fuels one's musical abilities (or can, if you don't get in its way).

I have often thought that my ridiculously poor sense of direction, having a very poor "mental map", was a limitation on my abilities as a musician. One needs to see and hear patterns on your instrument. I do that better on steel than I do behind the wheel of my car, but I can't help but thinking that if I had a better sense of spatial direction, I'd be that much better a musician...[This message was edited by Jim Cohen on 13 December 2003 at 04:43 PM.]

JB Arnold · Post by **JB Arnold** » 13 Dec 2003 6:59 pm

Jim
I don't know how you could get much better than you are....You'd probably just be on time.

JB

------------------
Fulawka D-10 9&5
Fessenden D-10 8&8
"All in all, looking back, I'd have to say the best advice anyone ever gave me was 'Hands Up, Don't Move!"
www.johnbarnold.com/pedalsteel
www.buddycage.net

http://www.nrpsmusic.com/index.html

Donna Dodd · Post by **Donna Dodd** » 13 Dec 2003 8:52 pm

VERY interesting perspectives!

Ron Page · Post by **Ron Page** » 17 Dec 2003 11:18 am

Some aspects of musicianship can no doubt be enhanced by “intelligence”. I think reading improves intelligence—or at least one’s use of their intelligence— and many if not most intelligent people read a fair number of books. So that brings us to yet another chicken or egg quandary. Stimulating the brain and exercising the memory can’t be a bad thing and reading sure does this.

Rainer, I don’t know if jogging will help you with “The Theory of Relativity” but it does attempt to address “Conservation of Mass”.

And here we are on the 2nd page of the thread and still no reply from Buddy. I’ll bet he’s either picking or reading a good book.

------------------
HagFan

David L. Donald · Post by **David L. Donald** » 17 Dec 2003 5:45 pm

Jim C. You have hit on the next level up from what I was talking about.

The pattern recognition is what is caused by and causes (chicken/egg) the brain to develope connections and also to spread those connections through various parts of the brain.

Some are storage, some are actuators that make muscles work, some are analysis functions.
All pertain to playing. Often going to several areas at the same time or in sequences.

Reading is a stream of datum that does the same thing, and can trigger physical functions, that we some times act on and sometimes supress.

Like pick that note, or
expect that note from another, and pick the harmony.

Who came first, is the classic arguement of Nature vs Nurture. There is much of both. basic nature prepares our brains to get trained, with basic connectivity functions for pattern recognition..
Nurture is HOW we are trained to use this basic neural connectivity.