Writing « Path Zero

Building Style ⇔ Experiential Exploration

Style can mean a lot of things. How an artist represents her or himself – whether in image, import, lyrics, and/or musical expression, among many other things – is their style. Check out Style Lens for some of my views on style. For learning to play guitar, we come to understand commonly accepted styles by what [...]

Stairs

We can get to the bottom of the stairs by falling down them, for sure. “I made it!” Yet, can we recreate the fall exactly? When we train at something, falling down the stairs is one way we can go about the process. We can ‘take swings’ at it. We can just keep trying, making the same and new mistakes [...]

Beef Stew

I taught lessons in Florida a while back. Within 20 minutes of changing an online profile to that area, my phone rang. It was Jim. Jim was knowledgeable about integral lines of thought. My profile mentioned this. At the time, I was using a version of the model. We agreed to meet and to work together on our guitar skills. [...]

Primary Practices

Guitar practice is built on doing things. Just as important as doing is the way we do things. The how matters. Learning to play is a cluster of processes rather than a fixed sequence of linear events. We may think we are being linear, but the zig-zagging nature of learning winds and dips and crests rather than one thing absolutely [...]

Framework & Journal Talk

Success with learning to jam on guitar starts with the way we organize our studies. A framework is the structure of our practice. It’s what holds it all together. And, different frameworks get different results. There is so much we can do on any given day. How to hold vital dimensions of exploration in our minds, while applying our best [...]