III
It is absurd to think practising our instrument is separate from the rest of our life. If we change our practice, we change our lives. Practice is not just what we do with our hands, nor just how we do what we do with our hands. Practice is how we are. How we hold our pick is how we organise our life. If we accept the implications of this, we will develop a healthy respect for our practice. At this point, we will become aware of our ignorance, and seek help. This may be an established institution, a personal teacher, or a school of practice.
If any school of practice is to have any weight, credence, or usefulness, it will provide a body of techniques, ideas, and a way to simply experience what it is.
A practice of any value will be three things:
- A way of developing a relationship with the instrument.
- A way of developing a relationship with music.
- A way of developing a relationship with ourselves.
So, a bona fide practice is one thing: a way. This way, of developing a relationship, is applied to the instrument, music, and ourselves. There is no separation between these approaches, only an apparent separation. Playing a musical instrument is a skill, and can become a craft. The way of the performing musician is a way of craft. There is craft to craft, and there is the art of craft. There is also the craft of art. Perhaps, the art of art is artlessness. The techniques of our craft should answer these questions:
- What am I to do?
- How should I do this?
- Why should I do this?
These techniques are in three fields: of playing the instrument, of music, and of being a person. I cannot play guitar without having a relationship with myself or with music. I cannot, as a guitarist, play music without having a relationship with myself and my guitar. And, by applying myself to the guitar and to music, I discover myself within the application. Techniques of value are efficient.
The ideas of the craft are ideas about playing the instrument, music, and what it means to be a human being. The ideas should be reasonable and coherent.
If this is a true way, it will confer a taste of what it means to be a player, a musician, and a human being: even to be all three at once. If this way is real, useful, and growing, it becomes a tradition of practice. The presence of this tradition becomes available to support those who approach it. This is a good test of the validity of any way: does it nourish me?
There are techniques and nourishment of varying quality, which we learn to recognize. A technique simulates what it represents, and prepares a space for the technique to become what it represents. For example, the manner in which I live my life is my way of practising to be alive. There is no distance between how I live my life and how I practice being alive. Then, the technique becomes what it prepares us to be, is the idea it represents, and conveys the quality which it is preparing us to recognize.
Ideas are of varying quality. Some ideas are arbitrary: in Guitar Craft we call these bright ideas. They are born in fragmentation and are misleading. Some ideas come from a creative insight, and may be presented descriptively, metaphorically, allegorically, or in analogy. Any idea has a pattern. If we can discover the pattern, we come closer to knowing the quality of the idea. If the idea is true, it brings us to life.
