jamey Faulkner

The guitar’s accessibility, versatility, portability, & ideal shape, makes it a perfect fit for human musicking.

Music is a lifelong endeavor. Yes, we can learn to play using advanced systems that enhance & speed up the process, yet ’7 days to mastery’ or ‘be a pro in 10 easy lessons’ is impossible & a touch misleading. The kind of thinking that produces these types of learning systems can often be fragmented & reductionist.

Deciding on a longer arc of music discovery sets the conditions for steady growth. Integrating the guitar into our lifestyles is a noble objective with tremendous rewards.

Building a guitar lifestyle is based on process. The types of processes you choose to engage, determine outcomes. There are universals & naturals systems that give rise to technical & musical development, yet each of us has a unique set of mental, physical, cultural, & social factors that express themselves in highly individualized ways.

There is a monstrous volume of guitar information on earth. Yet, there is still much to learn. Knowing that each of us has something to add to the experiential library provides a basis for personal exploration, whether our discoveries make it into the public arena or not.

What is true is that all of us can enjoy a balanced guitar lifestyle, without needless commercial nonsense or cultural definitions of what it means to use the instrument.

I play music because I love it. I love it because it provides me with a means to exercise important dimensions of self and to learn to interact with others in a very fun and intense way.

It is a most valuable experience to be fluid in an ocean of sound, whether alone, with others, or alone with others.

Now, I know some songs (covers). No big deal. It did actually take me years to ‘unlearn’ the 100 or so songs that I learned when I was still operating under the control of my programming. I can walk a lot lighter now, not carrying all that weight. Cultural mental glue stick gone. Ozzy, Motley Crue, the Scorpions…gone (remnants still remain).

Yet, I also can learn any song I need to know within a reasonable amount of time. How? By harboring a skill-set. One with musical abilities which provide the opportunity to steer my sail in the directions I choose, rather than the paths chosen by the madness of the ‘guitar store mentality’ (aka…”be my jukebox. Do you know this or that song? If you know it, I will shower you with approval, if you don’t, you stink”).

Now, there are levels of appropriateness to learning guitar. If you are 16 or 40 or any age, and just learning guitar, learn as many songs as you can. Jam with as many people as you can.

But, and this is the large but, enter the stream as yourself, not as a sonic clone. The song learning frenzy should be balanced by exploration of sound, chord creation exercises, melodic resonance, and songwriting (from the start).

Learning the guitar based only on song playing is a disaster for the ascent of the instrument and the mentality of our student-ship. The culture of copy has run its course, clear cutting the guts of our musical forest.

So, play guitar like the legends. Hmm…

If you play a song by Jimmy Page (a legend), are you really playing like Jimmy? What about the other Jimi (another legend)? How do you feel about that?

Who am I? I’m not Jimmy Page, nor Jimi Hendrix. If I want to play like Hendrix, do I need to do all that extra stuff? Fire? Teeth? Drugs? Death?

Bad ride. Let Jimi be Jimi. May he RIP.

Here’s the skinny: it is freaking impossible to play like anybody, whether they are a legend or not.

Please be yourself. Be yourself only. Be musical and creative and have fun through the spectrum of your world, your life, your music. Duplicity is a dreadful drain.

My name is not Jimi, nor Jimmy, nor Carlos, nor Estaban, and I can only play like me for the rest of my life. And, having truly accepted this, I have entered a new musical world. A vibrational paradise in a strong sense; alive with true resonance, adding to this life’s meaning. The blur is gone.

I don’t actually really know one cover all the way through that will entertain you in the ways you’ve been programmed to expect, yet I can watch other people’s hands, read music and charts, and use my developed ear to play other people’s tunes – if and when I choose.

Just because I play a guitar doesn’t mean I play it to entertain. I may play it for other reasons that fit into a larger context. So far, my best musical experiences are improvising with and without others, without anyone watching.

You get to choose how you approach music and what you do with it once you have compentencies that demand expression. If you choose a particular musical style, you enter into that cultural space, and learn the repertory. That is admirable, honorable, and ultimately acceptable. Nevertheless, it should be balanced with your own truth and interpretations.

And, if you choose to go your own route – a new direction – you join a growing number of musicians forging new paths into new styles, new fusions, new genres, and paths into the unknown.

Be your own legend. You already always are.

Overview by Jamey Faulkner based on work of Ken Wilber. Note: This is version .05 of the Integral Guitar Model (Integral Music Model).

The Integral Guitar Model is using the Integral Model developed by Ken Wilber, to teach, learn, understand, and play music (in this case, guitar).

(The Integral Guitar Model can also be called the Integral Music Model – you can substitute each instrument’s specific techniques, traditions, mental approaches, etc., but the core is the same. For this overview, we will use them interchangeably).

As mentioned in the Integral Model overview, music is a line in the integral framework. It is considered an auxiliary module or practice to the core modules (mind, body, spirit, shadow) in Integral Life Practice.

When using the map for the guitar, we can call the practice, Integral Guitar Practice, and for any type of music, Integral Music Practice. The Integral Music Model (for guitar) uses the Integral Map to learn and experience music.

As a line, music can also use the framework of the map. In a sense, this is the map within the map. The line music, which is a module of the Integral Life Practice, is using the Integral Map to create a system of learning, much like the cognitive line using the map to explore different perspectives of awareness.

The Integral Guitar Map utilizes the same 5 dimensions of awareness of the Integral Model: Quadrants, Lines, Levels, States, & Types.

AQAL (short for all quadrants, all levels) is the inclusion of all of them.

By understanding each moment from these 5 touch-views, and how we can use these 5 to enact our experiences – looking at our practice through the map (I, We, and It – The Big Three) – we have an opportunity to grow in exceedingly progressive ways and shrink time-lines.

Quadrants

The Quadrants provide the structure for the perspectives (I, We, It, Its). For the Integral Guitar Model, on a very general level, we’ll substitute mind, body, mutual resonance, jamming with others (we’ll refine this more later).

For simplicity, these will shake down to the The Big Three (I, We, It), yet we will use a modified version of the graphic above:

For the perspectives (quadrants), Upper Left (UL) is our inside experience (thoughts, feelings, mental constructs), Upper Right (UR) is our technical abilities, and the Lower Left (LL) and Lower Right (LR) are our understanding and interactions with others. LL is our cultural understanding with others, LR is our social system.

It is important to keep in mind how we are using the Integral Model. One, for every instance, all 4 perspectives are present (from). Two, we can organize our efforts (through) by exploring each of the perspectives (even though when we do so, all four are still present).

Lines

For our Integral Music/Guitar Model, lines are the specific and multiple areas of development. Lines are present in each quadrant. Version .05 of this model, has divided the discipline of music into the following areas.

Upper Left

Upper Right (Techniques for Guitar)

Lower Left and Lower Right as One (We – You & I + Its)

Levels

Levels are the altitude in each of the lines. As we work to expand and increase our altitude across all of the lines, we see how each can strengthen the other. Of course, no one is at the highest level in all lines.

States

States for the Integral Music Model describe the types of altered states musicians get into while they/we play. The most description is the ‘being in the zone’, as if the music was being played through the player. Also known as ‘flow’.

Types

For version .05 of the Integral Guitar Model, types are still personality types, plus male/female, and cultural, but we will add styles. Styles include Eastern and Western, traditional, modern, postmodern styles.

AQAL

AQAL, short for ‘all quadrants, all levels’ refers to including all dimensions of awareness (quadrants, levels, lines, states, and types) as we learn to play and interact with others.

Any one of these points could be expanded Ad infinitum.