Wednesday, June 8, 2011

The Beat Goes On 1001;20


Advice is cheap.  I hand it out sometimes, even though personal experience has shown that Advice can be Hazardous to Friendships.  However, in at least one recent case it earned a nice return.

One of my hobbies is playing acoustic guitar and singing at open mic nights.  Open mic nights are a whole subculture, which I am studying in my capacity as amateur sociologist and philosopher.  An open mic night is an evening at a "venue" provided by a business, and "hosted" by a person who is a musician/singer, and has sound equipment to set-up and share.  S/he shares the equipment with any number of fellow musicians / singers/ songwriters who show up at duly appointed hours to publicly do it musically.  Its a great way to try out songs, get ideas, steal music, meet fellow enthusiasts and have fun--all while stroking our need for attention.  Win/ Win/ Win: for the audience/ business patrons its free entertainment; for the business its free business, for the performers its free fun.  A year or so ago, I discovered there are open mics almost every night of the week in my area.  Communities of players form,who regularly attend the same mics.  To me it's like church, only at night and sometimes in coffee houses, sometimes in bars.  No collections taken, though.

One night at an open mic I handed some free advice to a friend: "capo up a fret or two when youre singing, raise the key youre singing in."  His voice was too low and I couldn't hear his low notes, plus singing a little higher often helps anybody's voice to sparkle.  This is the only advice I ever give about singing. Someone gave it to me years ago and it worked for me.

When I hand out advice the reaction is seldom instant gratitude, although over time said-advice sometimes works well.  I have not always been astute about gracious communication, either, and sometimes irritate people who think they're doing just fine without my input.  But my friend surprised me by saying, "Ok, and I'll give you back some advice."  Here he paused, being a retired social worker and someone who likes to frequently say that he's learned a lot throughout his career about dealing with all kinds of people.  I think he was gauging my reaction to his advice offer.  I must learn that trick.

My reaction looked interested, so he said, "Take drumming lessons."  That was a surprising and somewhat unrelated suggestion, so I looked even more interested.  "It'll help you keep your beat.  Take even 6 months of drumming lessons and it'll improve your singing."  This guy is a percussionist, who obviously believes in his chosen form of musical expression.  His answer was sincere and, as I thought about it, really interesting.  As an amateur singer I strive to improve over time, and I know from feedback that I usually sing too fast, or speed up if I start out slow. Another friend had commented to me once that you could always tell the open mic beginners, because they sing too fast.  (This is great stuff, huh?)  My advisor added, "All you need is a pad and some sticks to get started, and I can loan you some."  My decision scarce needed thinking about--  interesting advice AND free equipment to get started.

So I leaned over two chairs and tapped the back of another regular attendee, who is an experienced professional singer,guitarist, mandolin player, and also--lucky me!--teaches drums.  I explained stuff, and he agreed to teach me drums when I'm ready.  He also agreed with the suggestion that it would take care of my unstable beat issues. 

Between the two percussion advocates, I got excited about trying out Drumming for Voice.  Here I am, at My Age, taking up drums, which 20 minutes earlier had never entered my head.  Heck, Karen Carpenter got her start on drums! I had long been fascinated with my friend's djmbe, doumbek, tambourine, bodhran, and other unusual instruments.  It just hadn't occurred to me that I could or would learn how to use them, myself. 

And the whole idea of learning to pace my singing made me happy. I am an advocate of "Directed muscle action creates concept formation."  Yeah, that.  You know, like when the gorilla in the movie "2001: Space Odyssey"  picks up a stick and randomly whacks stuff, and accidentally hits the big hulking metal phallic-looking shaft that aliens sent to earth during our prehistory heydays, and the gorilla suddenly realizes that he has used the stick as a tool and he's in control.  This scene is actually a good illustration of Russian child psychologist Lev Vygotsky's thesis that children learn through doing stuff.  Like hitting things with sticks.   Our muscles have their own life, and feed their findings to our brain.  Or as neurosurgeon Antonio Dimasio theorizes in his book "Descarte's Error":  We Think Because We Are. (NOT, Descartes, "Cogitus ergo sum"; take that.)   Our brain doesn't figure things out, our bodies figure things out and the brain translates it into the popular media of thoughts, or concept realization.

Recently I've been thinking long on loss of muscle, loss of inspiration, loss of youth, and loss of lots of things.  I guess I fell into the ugly pit of "Old," which is nevertheless a lazy kind of comfort--getting old is an excuse to quit, for some of us wimps.  But some free advice about hitting things with sticks (or hands) has engaged my imagination.  Lifted that old Dark Veil of Disuse.  I even think that learning to rythmically whack things with sticks (or hands) could have some positive metaphorical backwash in my life.  Maybe I'll master The Beat and live more pace-fully.  Maybe, like the gorills in 2001, I'll form some concepts.

Sonny and Cher sang it truely when they sang: And the Beat Goes On...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umrp1tIBY8Q

1 comment:

  1. Hi "Olive"? I have a blog too, but not at all as deep as yours! I mainly correspond with my niece in Germany and talk about what we're cooking and knitting. I joined Anytime Fitness a couple months ago and I've been pretty faithful. This I did in the attempt to ward off the effects of getting older. I think about all that too!

    ReplyDelete