The Zen of playing guitar ?????? does it exisist for you ???

Keira-WitherKay

mmm this is a topic that i guess will get a wide spectrum of replies...........

and yeah no one can be right or wrong ..since this is even more personal to each musician than tone ............

but is playing guitar a spiritual experience(not religeous) for you or is it just a mechanical one .......

as for me ...... yes it is most definitely a spiritual experience........ i see music as art ....... and without soul art is pointless....

ok maybe for me it's also more personal cos i compose most ( all except some jazz standards) of the music i perform at my shows........so that makes it more than me just trying to perform or copy other peoples music,

so to me every show is deeply spiritual and personal , and i have in the last few years grown to respect that more and more......

and one thing i have found is that i can just play and find the joy in the playing of the music ... it's not in the pay cheque, or the groupies or even the amount and responce of audience ........ even though i have seen that since i am loving every instance of my performances... the audience notices this and they too respond positively ........

also i find that loving and personally enjoying what I performs lifts my soul( i too spent too many years doing sessions where the music was horrid but the paycheque was all that mattered... but no more )

a byproduct of loving and feeling the spiritual impact of ones music is that i find i can improvise so much better ... and most of my show is improvised these days .... allowing me the room to musically go anywhere in a show...and allows me to respond musically to my moods and makes the music more meaningful.......

so yeah what i am saying is that some might seek spiritual enlightenment in other ways......... but for me playing guitar and composing is what brings me closer to my personal "nirvana" (the spiritual meaning of Nirvana not the kurt cobains band heheh)

so i am being very much the "new age hippie" about my approach to my music.............. and to me it is very spiritual....

so what is your take ..........and yes if you do it for the groupies and the beer thats cool too..... so keen to hear everyones input .......

and another question ... do you think acoustic musicians tend to be more spiritual in their approach to music than electric ones???????? again just personal opinion... with no right or wrong........

so the Zen of guitar does it exsist for you ????

peace and light
Keira

Bob-Dubery

Keira WitherKay wrote: and another question ... do you think acoustic musicians tend to be more spiritual than electric ones???????? again just personal opinion... with no right or wrong........

No.

Spirituality is in the person, not in the instrument.

DonovanB

To me it Depends on how and what I am playing.

If I sit and play what I feel, then I can close my eyes and it will be a near spiritual experience.

If I play a show, generally of pre-rehearsed music it is more like work. There are times when the 2 merge but it isn't that often.

Bob-Dubery

X-rated Bob wrote: Spirituality is in the person, not in the instrument.

And I think sometimes it can be in the listener rather than in the performer/composer. There is some music that provokes quite a profound responsee in my tortured, shabby little soul. Beethoven does this - The Emperor, The Moonlight Sonata - but this is what I experience. I actually have no idea of what Beethoven's intent was, if he was a spiritual person or not.

I don't even consider myself to be a spiritual person, and I think that reasonable people may well disagree on the definition of "spiritual", but I do know that sometimes music has given me access to a beauty that nothing else can offer.

Bob-Dubery

A quote:
Music is spiritual stuff, and even musicians who clearly worship money, or fame, or ego, cannot help but express a better part of themselves sometimes when performing, so great is the gift of music, and so connected to our higher selves.

Bob-Dubery

Keira WitherKay wrote: but is playing guitar a spiritual experience(not religeous) for you or is it just a mechanical one .......

Both. It's ALWAYS mechanical. But I think that the mechanical leads to the higher things. A lot of spiritual paths have aspects of ritual, of repetition, of rigour.

AlanRatcliffe

Keira WitherKay wrote: but is playing guitar a spiritual experience(not religeous) for you or is it just a mechanical one .......

Option three for me: It's fun! I get lost in it sometimes and rarely have any idea what the hell I'm doing, but it's more fun for me that way (and I screw up less when I'm not thinking).

and another question ... do you think acoustic musicians tend to be more spiritual in their approach to music than electric ones????????

Nope. It's personal. John McLaughlin, Carlos Santana...

LMinnie

Quite simple really...The music you play takes you places...When you're really into what you're playing you close your eyes and just go with it...Look at any guitarist playing a lead riff...Check the face... the emotion is there.

At least thats the way it is with me when I sit and play melody's and chord progressions I drift away..My studio is my escape..Had a shitty day at work? Better half been irritating? Just plug in a go somewhere else..That's the beauty of music..especially the type you play yourself,So to answer your question YES..playing is a "spiritual" thing... ?

lindsmuse

When you love music each note you play should in spiritual terms be the first and last and best note, drum-beat ever. Because it makes you happy, it uplifts your spirit.
When you hear music where there are thousands of notes played or sang at you and they are either technically perfect OR sang/played with higher intent they will rather let you respond emotionally or spiritually. I don't think you will even have time to think of the technical aspects. But to get to experiencing music that you are personally playing on an instrument spiritually I think you will have to have the technical aspects well under control.
I used to believe that tabla players could only possibly be playing on spiritual steam until I heard speed drumming in Black /Death Metal! And that is purely technical ... or is it. Maybe there's some other aspect - our automatic robot thing ...

Conrad

Keira asks interesting questions not to mention BIG questions. ?

I would 1st need to have a definition for spritual to answer accurately and even then my answers would probbaly still suck a bit.

Here is my disclaimer: don't read on if you get bored easily. Rather skip to the "My point is" part..
And here is my attempt at an answer and I promise that I am getting to a point int the end.
Any lanugauge has a finite number of words that can be combined in a finite number of ways with each combination yielding a meaning or maybe (more accurately) evoking symantic understanding in the reader or listener. Now since the amount of combinations of words are finite, the set of symenatic interepretations are also finite but music is different in the same way that some mathematics is different.

I will use a small mathematical analogy, if you imagine that there were only 2 numbers in the universe 1 and 0 and only 2 words "Guitar" and "my". 1st of all (using language) "My guitar" has symantic significance, but what about "Guitar my"? but using only the 2 numbers we have can construct 10 (which has meaning), 01 (which has meaning) and we can go well beyond. How about 10100 (which has meaning)? Using our set of words, that would yield "Guitar my Guitar my my" (no meaning). You can probably see by now that we can do this forever or till infinity.

Here is the nice part. In the western musical system we have 12 such numbers.
My point is that, using numbers (notes), one can express more (theoretically infinite) symantically significant feelings, messages, objects or whatever and I think the theoretically infinite has been and is intuitively associated with the spiritual.

I don't know I hope that makes sense an please don't ban me from the forum.

C

[deleted]

"Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul"

It is spiritual... It is a passion... Can't be explained...

Squonk

Depends what you mean by spiritual!

Is it supernatural?, I dont mean ghosts and Freddy Krueger, I mean something that's not quite on earth but yet within our grasp.
Something that connects with my soul ( who I am) and is uplifting?
Music does that to me, and I think Keira had a point when she mentioned acoustic players, It's something you experience on your own when you are alone with your instrument (whatever it is).
There are the Fun times, the practising, the Live performance where mechanics are involved but there are those Other times of solitude and quietness when it's more of a spiritual thing!!!!!

[deleted]

Any lanugauge has a finite number of words that can be combined in a finite number of ways with each combination yielding a meaning or maybe (more accurately) evoking symantic understanding in the reader or listener. Now since the amount of combinations of words are finite,

This is very interesting in respect to the book I'm reading at the moment. It's a "biography" on Shakespeare, but for lack of information on his life it's more of a historical book. The bit that thrills me is that at his time language was a much more flexible thing. If people were inclined to alter words it was acceptable. Not to menion spelling (Shakespeare never spelt his name the same way twice, and strangely never in the way that is commonly used nowdays). Many of his plots and sometimes whole passages were not his own, but he had a way of making words mean new things. That is why Shakespeare was so special.

Back on to the topic. I don't know what the motivation of electric players is, but it is definately comforting feeling the resonance of the guitar on my body. The feeling of balancing every force makes me feel light and open. Then my whole body becomes part of the performance. In that way the mechanical is very spiritual to me. And I also think the effort to stay with it when it's tough realy pays off (and if that's spiritual I'd be surprised). There's nothing like picking up your guitar when you've warmed it up for a few days and it's like honey drips off your fingers.

P.S I thought Santana was only into the spirits.

DonovanB

Viccy wrote: Back on to the topic. I don't know what the motivation of electric players is, but it is definately comforting feeling the resonance of the guitar on my body. The feeling of balancing every force makes me feel light and open. Then my whole body becomes part of the performance. In that way the mechanical is very spiritual to me. And I also think the effort to stay with it when it's tough realy pays off (and if that's spiritual I'd be surprised). There's nothing like picking up your guitar when you've warmed it up for a few days and it's like honey drips off your fingers.

Good Vibrations?

Music is so powerful, you can change peoples moods and emotions and if you try hard enough their opinions as well. It is all about effective communication. If you can take your mood and feelings and transfer them to your audience there is nothing better

Keira-WitherKay

mmmm seems to be some question to what i meant by spiritual, yet i think most have answered how i intended it.......

to me spiritual can be anything that brings you closer to your own soul or essense of being..... for some it's golf,skydiving, swimming with dolphins, dancing naked in the rain but for me it's music and playing guitar .... if you play guitar cos you get laid thats not spiritual although some some argue that it too brings you closer to jesus hehheheh (inside joke for those who know the work of feminist poet alix olsen)

but yes if you play a piece to see how perfect you can play it ...or to impress others thats mechanical.... but if you can sit and just play whats in your head/heart/soul whereever your creativity stems from.... then thats spiritual. and once you have the skill to make the music you hear inside you translate to what you play without working it out ...just let the music appear at your fingers ......... and believe me you'll be surprised what beautiful music lurks within us all..if only we can find the way to channel it out....

and yes feeling the vibrations is very important and comforting and vibration is part or all around us......

so yeah spiritual can be whatever is spiritual to you.thats why i started the 1st post with "THERE'S NO RIGHT OR WRONG IN THIS DEBATE" we all interpret life and our own beings very differently .........

Bob-Dubery

Keira WitherKay wrote: but yes if you play a piece to see how perfect you can play it ...or to impress others thats mechanical.... but if you can sit and just play whats in your head/heart/soul whereever your creativity stems from.... then thats spiritual. and once you have the skill to make the music you hear inside you translate to what you play without working it out ...just let the music appear at your fingers ......... and believe me you'll be surprised what beautiful music lurks within us all..if only we can find the way to channel it out....

That would allow people to play atonal, arythmic nonsense on a guitar that hasn't been tuned on the grounds that it's not mechanical it's spiritual and it's the fruits of my own creativity blah blah.

Art requires a form is what I think. You get poetic forms like haiku or limerics or sonnets where you are constrained by number of syllables or lines or by a metric scheme. You have to distill what you want to say so that it fits within those constraints. You have to sharpen the pencil of your soul, pare things down to their essence.

Music needs a mechanism. Or the mechanism defines it as music.

chris77

Great topic! I especailly like the Zen reference, liking playing guitar to meditation and ultimately enlightenment. ( a few bottles of red wine's worth of late nigit philosophy right there...) There are times I will sit and strum while watching t.v or keeping a conversation going and other times I will serenade my cats or the missus (or whoever is unlucky enough to be within earshot...) with whatever pops up or I happen to stumble upon. Then its more a recreational thing and really not very Zen at all. Just something to do that I love. But sometimes when I play I shut myself off from everything and just play whatever my fingers feel like and my mood takes me. These times are the closest to meditation I am likely to get. I get to clear my mind for a while and I always feel happier and more relaxed as a result of it. I am too fat for yoga, too clean cut to use drugs and to cynical to join a new age cult, so it seems that playing my guitar is the only way to get some spiritual healing when the dark clouds gather. So yes, it can be Zen, but it can also not be. And I wouldnt want it any other way...

Keira-WitherKay

@ BOb ... yeah i totally agree one needs the mechanics........ but what i'm asking is does it end there........

or do we have a deeper side to being musicians..... and yes i agree not for everyone..........

yet surely yes like most other musicians ...we hear music in our heads.... .

and when i compose i don't sit with an instrument and tinker till i find a melody that works ...i hear it first......... in my head and can hum or sing it then only do i work out how to get it to play on the guitar/piano .... and yes because of the years of playing my subconscious mind does obey the rules of western music.........

so if i compose a flamenco piece my mind will automatically use the phrygian dominant scale to work out the melody...and i guess there are the rules you mentioned .... same as my more classical pieces will be without doubt centre around harmonic minor and appegio's ...... or variatiations thereof........

but this is all now subconscious.......... like a chant that one knows and has no more need to read off.... i think we as humans hear music within us that is very correct theoretically.... cos lets be honest most of us except the tone deaf can differentiate between dischordant and melodious..........but many musicians just lack the motor skills to perform the work.......

i mean we all can sing some sections of a concerto or even sing a difficult guitar solo so i think that our minds are musically developed way beyond our motor skills .....and luring those tunes out of our heads is what i feel is quite spiritual... almost going beyond ones conscious ability ...

and yeah i hear the disbelievers saying thats mumbo jumbo....but try it ..

bet you can sing a complex guitar solo or hear it in your head.....

now just try relax and let your fingers follow what you hearing or singing ....... don't think about the theory just play what you hear ....... at music school i had a tutor who said when it comes to solos "if you can sing it you can play it" ........

yet in reality i see the entire process of performing as spiritual or has spiritual meaning to me.... this is my art and i truly see music as an artform.... and so does my art define me or me it ......... doubt even i can answer that for myself........

but Bob a definite +1 yeah you right there are still rules in place....... but all subconsciously ...well for me anyway ....

PeteM

@Keira - there is so much to contemplate in this thread that I have found it difficult to pass comment.
However I think your initial question was around the spiritual aspect of music. We first need to define in our own minds what 'spiritual' means to us. You touched on the aspect of 'the subconcious mind and automation'. To me spiritual means going beyond introspection and the relationships we each have between our concious and subconcious minds.
What I say next might be controversial, but to me spritual means being in contact with a greater power. I find that music, whether I'm listen, composing or playing other people's work gives me a connection to that greater power.
I don't think I'm alone in this - most, if not all religions since time immemorial , have used music in their rituals.

Seventhson

Well when I play I feel very complete. Usually I zone out when I play(by that I mean It is me and my guitar)And nobody in the world exists when I play. ? I love my guitar and cannot go one day with out play for a couple of hours.