I promised several Blogs ago to write about Guitar Practice. My Practice Schedule (PS) is my ‘Daily Prayers’. I do it 4 days a week – Monday to Thursday, and time willing, sometimes on Friday, Saturday, and/or Sunday. It takes about 5 hours to get through the whole thing. The PS I do is veryContinue reading “Zen and the art of guitar practice”
Author Archives: clydeschipke
“Today’s special is…. chips!”
Life is more than just chips. Sure, go for the quick unquestioned filler, and send the other stuff back untried – but at your own peril.
[insert band name here]
Band name-changing parties were a highly anticipated event. They were usually organised as an ‘important band meeting’ but were structured around pizzas, beer, and much like reality shows now days – alliances.
A man walks into a bar…
Music still tears down the borders, defies discrimination and is an egalitarian welcome mat wherever you find yourself in the world.
S.O.S – Save Our Solos!
One of the sure signs that a species is in decline is when you notice that there is no offspring. Where are our young Lead Guitarists? And where are the guitar solos? Through our own arrogance (as Lead Guitarists) we have become victims of hubris. Through our own arrogance we allowed our way of life as Lead Guitarists to become a competitive sport, rather than an artistic expression or emotion. And our competition was each other.
Fear in Focus
If you look back through time at the great innovators in rock guitar playing, you’ll often find that the innovation came from them exploring genres that were not their base.
Things that go ‘doof-doof’ in the night!
Learning how to do something you can’t do already is actually what ‘learning’ means.
What’s inside your box?
The size of your box depends on what you’ve got shoved in it. The less junk you have in it the more usable space there is. It’s a bit like that with our musical creativity – every now and then we need to trash some of our old ways of thinking in order to make space for some fresh stuff.
Happy Birthday Mr Holdsworth
What disturbs me greatly is the ‘Frankenstein’s monster’ approach to song production, where bits and pieces of old and new material are stitched together, usually with a rap, and sold as the ‘next big thing’.
You can’t tell the time from inside a clock
You can’t tell the time from inside a clock. Analysing something to death, pulling something apart until you can see every cell of it, is not the reverse process of creating it.
Clyde Schipke 