Robert Fripp's Diary

Bredonborough An aim without wish

10.51

Bredonborough.

An aim without wish is stillborn.

A grey day.

I woke ahead of the alarm at 06.50: the bookshelves are not the colour I ordered!

The last bookshelves delivered, to The Cellar, were in the two colours chosen, but in reverse positioning; these were delivered, assembled, dismantled, returned to the workshop, repainted, returned & re-assembled. Fortunately, the colour scheme on the Garage Conversion bookshelves is the right colour scheme, but not for these shelves. Given the size, removal is not a favoured option; given the time I have put aside to be present for the fitting, additional time for removal, repainting, returning & re-assembling, is not the favoured option; given the excitement, bibliophasty & its attendant tumescenses to 11, boxes already moved from cellar to the floor in front of the new shelves, as if genuflecting before their mighty promise of housing & accommodation; I am persuaded that the colour scheme, as delivered, is an act directed by subconscious intent, and is exactly right for the space.

Bibliophastical Old Goat & New Right-Wrong Colour…

12.41 From the reply to a respected academic author, who has sent the synopsis of their new book…

you invite comments & several follow...

1.         your no. 5 rationale: the meaning of musical performance. this is a book in itself, even a series of books! for me, performance is the global context within which almost everything else fits.

performance mediated by commerce is almost a separate field of performance; and one in which i am well experienced. briefly, a performance mediated by commerce & a performance (eg in a church) have almost nothing - qualitatively - in common.

2.         turnbull - the limitations of the pick. he was correct, in 1974. he is currently more correct than i would like! the operation of the right hand is a subject i have been addressing directly since 1960. even as a 13 year old, it was obvious that picking hadn’t been developed. so, it became & continues to be a speciality of mine.

this is linked to the emergence of plectrum guitar in popular music & dance bands during the 1920-30s, replacing the banjo, a plectrum instrument. metal strings & a pick, 6-string chords on acoustic guitars, gave volume. with electricity, the volume requirement changed but picking didn’t develop - tone & volume production, the primary function of the pick, was essentially the province of amp & pick-ups.

as a point of observation: pick / elecric guitar makers tend to make instruments that accomodate their own guitar playing. since there is no widely-held "school of right hand" as one would find in piano or violin technique, there is no readily available model. so, guitars are not made for the right hand because there isn’t a school of right hand & the right hand doesn’t get to develop because the guitar isn’t made for the right hand!

we have even begun to manufacture guitars for Guitar Craft students.

3.         the guitar & the body: generally, the body fits itself to the guitar, as per the above. properly, the guitar comes to the body.

in practice, the posture young men adopt to play the guitar has more to do with testosterone than an efficient playing style. so, to instruct young guitar players one has to deal more with attitudes, assumptions, value structures & notions of self-image, than guitar playing per se.

4.         Guitar Craft had its 22nd. anniversary last sunday. many of your interests & concerns are also ours. on courses we have alexander teachers for the use of the body, learn the instrument within performance situations, have students from four continents (the latin american are superb), and the learning emphasis is based in practice rather than theory.

GC does have a model of right hand picking technique, but this is not known within the mainstream. it takes 2-3 years of focused practising to establish a sound, basic right hand technique. few students are prepared, initially, to invest the necessary time & work to acquire this foundation.

5.         i read Running With The Devil during a week in a NY Broadway theatre, returning to the hotel after the performances, with KC in 1996!

12.47  From a reply to another learned e-correspondent…

is ring composition innate or learned? is musical form innate or learned? well, we’d probably say both, wouldn’t we?

cf http://web.hep.uiuc.edu/home/karliner/golden.htm

“Professor Sever Tipei sent this in response to a student who asked about thGolden Ratio in music: The golden mean ratio can be found in many compositions mainly because it is a "natural" way of dealing with divisions of time. One can find it in a lot of works by Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, etc., etc. It is a question if it was used in a deliberate way or just intuitively (probably intuitively)”.

one musical equivalent of "innate" composition is the pentatonic scale, which seems to be a common feature of most musical cultures. "folk" music (music of the essence?) is often pentatonic. the musical forms adopted by "folk" would be "built-in" organic forms, on which our bodies are constructed - the form/s of organic life: fibonacci. the pentatonic moves to the symmetrical.

writing for king crimson in 1971-74, my personal musical voice began emerging, which i followed rather than try to lead. i would play a particular musical figure, while paying attention to how my body responded to it. if my body wasn’t convinced, i changed the details until a fit came together.

in time, noticing this, intellect & rationality & information came to bear & the insight developed. erno lendvai’s writings helped, when i discovered him c. 1985, particularly the workshop of bartok & kodaly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erno_Lendvai

http://www.mi.sanu.ac.yu/vismath/isiscd/lend1.htm

15.36  Began practising & then – a van arrived with more shelves, these for the Minx’s half of the Garage Extension…

16.31  One of my favourite photographers, Ingrid Pape-Sheldon, now has a blog.

http://pape-sheldon.com/blog/blog.html

17.04  To a Crafty who has invited advice on his recording project…

very briefly: record without thinking about it. so, the playing must be in the body before you go into the studio.

you know everything you’re going to do, so go in & do it in 1-3 takes (no more) & then have fun - do what you don’t know what you’re going to do! throwaways & improv.

the rest you know - and remember invocation & thanks!

E-frenzying.

17.17  E-enough.