Kimmo, Trey and Pat

Trey Gunn on iLike - Add iLike to your MySpace

I have begun teaching in a fairly substantial way lately, and I love it. I have had a few private students over the last few years although no one has hung around for terribly long. Either their interest in studying with me was a ruse in order to meet me, and once they did the process was complete. Or, they had come to learn how to play a touchstyle instrument (Warr Guitar or Stick or that style adapted to guitar or bass). But once I showed them the work involved they quickly vanished! Who knows? Most likely it wasn't time for me to be giving instructions. So I answered their questions and they mostly moved on.

But something has changed in the last six months. I have gotten many, many inquiries for help in furthering people's musical/creative processes. Some are local and some are very far away. I am compelled to figure out a good iChat/Skype system so that I can do instruction remotely. I think this may be as simple as running my instrument and a talk-back mic through a small mixer board before sending it to the online chat system. It may mean hooking up my nicer video camera. I don't know yet. But there seems to a be a need here, so I am answering.

I have, also, begun teaching at a local middle & high school here in Seattle. Puget Sound Community School. This totally caught me by surprise, as I would have never pursued such a thing. I was invited to a meeting for this school where community members pitch classes to the students. It sounded curious to me so I went.

It turns out this school is very unusual in that the curriculum is completely student driven. The philosophy is that if the teachers bring what are their true passions to the table and just make them available to the students, then you get a stronger synergy between the three. The three being: student/instructor/material. The students are not required to do anything. The only main requirement is you must be at the school during school hours. What you choose to do with you time there is up to you. If you want to sit around and play video games all day, then that seems to be a choice that is supported. But here's the wild thing: they don't. They get caught up in all the cool things that are going on and choose to participate. Languages, physics, math, tons of music, art, social sciences… it's all going on.

Anyway, the meeting went quite well and there were very, interesting folks there. One guy was going to pitch a class in dance improvisation and Brazilian Capoirera. Another was going to be working through Hamlet with the students reading the parts out loud and discussing it in depth. Another was pitching a physics class on space and time. And about half-way through the meeting Michael Shrieve showed up! For those who don't know the name, Michael is local Seattlite who played drums on the first six Santana records. He was at Woodstock and has played with Mick Jagger and Pete Townsend and many, many others. In all the years that I have been here in Seattle I had never met Michael. Who would know that this would be the context?

By "pitching a class" I mean that there is one morning set aside for everyone to "sell" their classes to the students – you have the floor and tell everyone what class you are offering and why you are excited about the subject. Then the students spend the next two days negotiating amongst themselves to figure out what classes are going to be put into the schedule and what time that will happen. This is some serious negotiating as the class you really want may not make it into the schedule. I watched some of this take place and I can attest that these types of compassionate negotiating skills are key to how this planet will work in the near future. Everyone make their cases for what they want very clearly and then EVERYONE works to get EVERYONE's needs met. It wasn't a case of who has the most power gets to bully others into getting their way. Of course everyone doesn't get everything they want, but seeing this process unfold gave me some real hope for this planet.

As soon as I got home I knew what I would offer: one class in ear training and one in odd-times and polyrhythms. I wrote up a synopsis, sent it and went to pitch my class. This was quite fun because you got to hear all the instructors tell a bit about themselves and what drives them. Then you get to hear about their class. I went near the very end and it was terribly amusing to me. This was a general group of American teenagers ranging from 12 up to 18. So there was a spectrum from high energy enthusiasm through to drooling malaise. When I began to speak and talk about who I am and what I have done there started to be some small level of interest. Then I begun to list off a few of the people I had played with. I began going down the shortlist and there was still only general interest. But when I said the "Tool" if was like an electric charge went off in the room. One kid practically has a seizure in his chair!

Afterwards one of the other potential instructors (she wasn't pitching a class this quarter but just observing the process) told me that she figured out the secret to making her class work: you just put the word "tool" into your pitch. For example. "I going to be teaching a class on puppet-making. And we are going to make puppets of the guys from Tool!"

Next up, after me, was Michael Shrieve. He has a very humble manner which is in total contrast to the folks he has worked with -- Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, George Harrison, Pete Townsend, Steve Winwood, Andy Summers, film composer Mark Isham, John Mclaughlin, Klaus Schulze, Freddie Hubbard, Jaco Pastorius, Wayne Horvitz, Bill Frisell, Zakir Hussain, Airto Moriera and Amon Tobin – the list is crazy. One kid was so excited that he asked Michael, during his pitch, if he could hug him. And he did.

Who doesn't want to go to this school?

There was strong enough interest in my two classes that both made it into the schedule. Now I am two weeks in and it is going quite well. I am quite stunned with how strong the basic skills are with these students. In odd-times they were playing 5 against 7 within the first hour. In ear training they were singing major and minor seconds right away. I had them singing long tones in two groups, with both groups only a minor 2nd apart singing at the same time! What a sound!

September 30, 2008 Seattle, WA

I attended a very interesting meeting last week at the Aikido Dojo, Tenzan Aikido, where I practice. It is still resonating with me.

The meeting was mostly logistical but, because the practice of Aikido is hands on with very little talking, to have a meeting where the Sensei speaks and shares his approach and strategies was quite illuminating.

What was discussed was how to make take the Dojo (the name for the space of practice) to the next level. This means bringing the running of the place more into the hands of the practicers. Cleaning, answering the phones, greeting visitors and presenting to them how the practice unfolds are all part of being involved. This was straight forward for me, as it is a given for the running an ongoing place of practice and transmission.

What got interesting for me was the discussion about how this Sensei (Bruce Bookman) came to his approach in how he presents Aikido; how it is currently evolving; and what are his current questions about the practice. It was absolutely fascinating for me to hear these details about a practice that is quite different from my work as a musician, but intimately parallel. And now entering into the Aikido path (although, my entrance and ambition is certainly mild compared to many of the practicers), I am able to sense/feel/experience these questions inside my own body.

One example. There has been a common thread about self-defense in much of the presentations of the techniques. Obviously, Aikido is a form of martial art and much of the practice is based on taking the energy of an attack and turning it back on the attacker. So it is inherently self-defense oriented. Yet, my interest has nothing to do with self-defense. I am interested in the movement and connection between the two partners. I may even say that, at this point, I just enjoy moving my body through space and taking on the challenges of doing these complex relationship/movements.

So the self-defense aspect doesn't drive me. Bookman Sensei has been adapting some of the Aikido practices and adding some other forms of self-defense to these practices to build a bigger body of techniques. These include some traditional boxing defenses and Brazilian Jujitsu. I haven't cared one way or another. I just enjoy the challenges of these new movements. In fact I haven't really gotten the bigger point of self-defense as I have never had to physically defend myself since 7th grade. That was when one of the meaner of the bullies at school, after pushing me for about six months, finally pushed me just a bit too hard. We were in the hall and I turned and slugged him on the side of the head. He fell over and when he hit the ground the whole hallway went silent. I was never bullied again.

But Bookman gave us his reasoning for the power of self-defense. I will only paraphrase and probably not do it full justice, but it has something to do with making contact with the core position of being able to defend one's actual survival. That within us, at our very root, is the place of "I will survive." I can extrapolate that this place is beyond anything personal, or beyond being a member of a group: a race or a nation or a family. It is even beyond being a human being. That is it somewhere near the core of being a living being. It is somewhere right at the edge of life and death.

OK. I must ponder that a bit more. But not too much. It is embedded in the practice, so all I need to is just continue to practice.

*NOTE. I have only been practicing Aikido for about 9 months and quite possibly have mis-represented everything about it.

Spoiler Alert Radio, as website about "all things film", has just posted a downloadable audio interview with me. We discuss the new CD "Music for Pictures"; scoring to picture; integrating sound, story and imagery into multi-media project and more.




Trey Gunn interview at Spoiler Alert Radio

We had a crazy long day. Sleep last night didn't begin until 3am. Woke at 8am for flights to Finland. Arrived in Helsinki, checked into hotel, ran over to gig, set up, sound checked, swallowed some food and ran on to stage.

Sound check went quite well considering we were a four piece today. Samuli Kosminen joined back in KTU for tonight! Sami plays with MUM and has two small children. This means his space for KTU has been quite limited and we have been moving forward as a trio. However being here in Helsinki, Sami joined us tonight. This mean there was only one musician not wearing a skirt tonight – Pat.

The show was very strong. Almost everyone who had seen us before, and even at this same club, said that the band was completely different this time. That we were stronger and even more of a band. That was nice to hear, of course.





It was a very relaxed set, which I enjoyed. We were so tired and burned out from Russia that we weren't quite in synch at the beginning of the show. It took a good three pieces to begin a real take off. That meant, in a way, that "Unmistakable", "KataKlasm" and "Nano" were kind of throw-away pieces for the evening. But of course, not, as they got us moving together so that when we hit "Absinthe" the real explosion began.

"Absinthe" was very hot. White Hot. And we took our time with it. Kimmo has implemented the idea that when we hit my solo the rhythm section (which at that point is now Kimmo and Pat) come down in volume and they build up behind me. We tried it in Moscow, but it didn't quite catch hold. However, tonight it worked very well.

One of the next steps for KTU is in expanding our dynamic/dramatic range. We have begun thinking about how to do this in our own way. So it was exciting to see this one small idea take hold with "Absinthe."

One of the things that struck me from the Kazan Festival was the performance by Zemfira. She is a Russian singer who has a very simple band – guitar, bass, drums and two horns. The music is, also, quite simple. But the dynamic range that they work with hit me immediately. The verses would sound quite strong, but then when they would go into a chorus the sound would explode enormously. Then they would bring it back down in the next verse, and so on

All this sounds so simple and something that any band would do. But these guys did it very, very well.





- - -

Sami joined us for the last four pieces of our set. This worked very well and the sound was quite clear. This had been an issue for me in the early days of this group when we were a four piece. They was SOOOO much sound. Firstly Kimmo was using stage monitors that were crazy loud. (Now he uses in ear monitors and has no stage monitors.) And Sami and Pat made so much sound, that sometimes I couldn't figure out how to fit in. But it seems like we have sorted a lot of that out over the last two years, because we sounded very strong with Sami.

- - -

OK, now the shows are over. We move into a studio on an island just off the coast of Helsinki to begin mixing the next KTU record.

KTU

Big show tonight. Well, OK, not as big as Kazan. But a good 2,000 people in a very large club. We had a great audience. Very responsive and VERY happy to have us.

There was an opening solo guitarist whom I didn't know, then KTU, Eddie Jobson, Adrian Belew Power Trio and a Crimson Project with Jobson, Tony Levin and Pat joining the AB Power Trio. Originally our plan had been to bring T Lev into the last three pieces of the KTU set. But Tony wasn't feeling well enough to make it to our rehearsals in Moscow, so we'll have to wait for another time for this idea.



We spent yesterday in a studio running through our material and getting more up to speed as today's show was longer than Kazan. Also, the Helsinki show tomorrow will be even longer. It was very good to have had this extra time playing together. I think it had a huge effect on the show.

We played very well tonight. I think it was easily our best gig to date. The sound was big and fat and clear, and we were able to really play the room and work with the audience. Often times with this group I am struggling so much with either the sound or the material that I don't get relaxed and confident enough to move to the next level of playing. This can be very frustrating as there are even more levels, beyond tonight, that we just haven't quite gotten the space to access yet.

However, tonight was a huge leap forward. We made the effort to take extra space between, around and inside the pieces. No rushing and no urgency. Just let the notes come when they come. And it paid off. Many of the tracks moved forward in energy that was quite surprising.

I can't wait to feel what it is like to play with this band when we have 10 shows in a row!

Next up was Eddie. I didn't get to see his set, but I heard very, very good things about. One of our crew was convinced that he was performing a Finnish classical composer's piece, but I forgot to check with him later.

Then came the Belew Power Trio. I went up in the balcony to hear the second half of their set. We were crazy tired and the stress of dealing the complications of having so many musicians to deal with at all of the sound checks left us wiped. So I took a good hours worth of break after our set before going out to hear Adrian. They sounded fantastic. Way, way, way, way better than when Pat and I played with them in Seattle last year. It was a really fun show. Then the Crimson Project took over.

At the end of all the playing Sasha brought everyone up on stage for a final bow. Kimmo and I were the only new ones to join the rest of the musicians as everyone else had been onstage for the Crimson Project. I went out and was standing next to Eddie when Kimmo joined. He had a big beer with him and tried to throw some of it on the audience, but missed and ended up spilling the whole thing on Eddie's rig. It was a fantastic moment! Eddie was so cool and said "well, there you go."

We all took our bows and left.


At that point I was completely wiped and headed back to the hotel.













-- photos by Tony Levin --



- - -

It is always so great to play in Russia and tonight was no exception. There is something about the history of this country, and it's history of artists, that I can hear people listening through when I perform here. It sort of like working to a higher standard of audience. Or at least a different standard of audience. We, in the West, are so used to commercial standards. We are so programmed to perceive and judge based on commercial standards. Even those of us who aspire to the highest levels of the power that art and music can deliver – still we are colored by how the marketplace reacts and responds. And it isn't like Russians are immune to that, but the traditions are different and I love it.

On to Helsinki.

with KTU

We played the festival concert today. What an incredible series of performances. My favorites were Sergey Starostin, Inna Zhelannaya and Patti Smith. The flow of the whole festival was very well done, with each group only playing for about 20 minutes. So there was this constant changing of music and personnel.

Our show was terribly rough. It was hard to conceive of how the sound could be so completely different from yesterday's sound check, but it was. It was nearly impossible to hear anything well even for us to stay in time with each other. The accordion wasn't putting out sound when we began and the electronics of Pat's were crazy loud. I kept trying to adjust my levels in order to get a balance that I could work with, but it never happened.

However, we played quite well (we were told!) and our set was very exciting. This is, to large degree, due to us blasting on top of each other and trying to stay together. Any good musical train wreck can always be followed by a successful realignment. Or not. Either way, there is much excitement.

The general consensus was that there was just over 200,000 people. That definitely takes the record for the largest audience I have ever played to. Although, I never could quite relax into the moment and play with the audience – the sound and technical obstacles were just too challenging.






But, a good gig overall. We give it two thumbs up and would do it again in a heartbeat.

I got to see Eddie Jobson debut his first gig in 27 years. And then he did another. And another. And another. Four debut gigs in one day! The first was with Fairport convention, then with the King Crimson project(Adrian, T Levin, Pat Mastelotto, Eric Slick and Jobson) which played Red and Larks II. Then he played with Patti Smith (along with Tony Levin) and then in the grand finale with fireworks blowing up all over Kazan.

Look for pictures here:

more photos here at Inna's page



- - -


The next day we had a day off and took a trip to a monastery a few miles away. It was interesting to go there as I haven't been inside an Orthodox monastery. But, sadly, there was no working vibe in the place. They said their were twenty monks living there, but really it was just a museum tourist destination.

Our guide gave lot's of information about Kazan, the region and some of it's history. Most notable was some of the games they play during a festival on the summer solstice. One of which was described as "beating the jars with closed eyes."

We also learned the origin of the term "decimation." It came into use when Trotsky lined up all the captured prisoners from a battle and shot every tenth one in front of the rest. (UPDATE NOTE: It turns out this ISsn't true. I guess our guide was feeling a bit ambitious about the region's connections to Trotsky... While Trotsky might have applied it, the term "decimation" comes from the Romans.)

On to Moscow.

The Kazan Festival of Peace.

We are here in Kazan with one of the most interesting line up of performers I have ever seen.

Sergey Starostin (with Sergey Clopa) – Russia singer and wind instruments
Inna Zhelannaya – singer with the Russian group "The Farlanders" who I have performed and recorded with
Huun-Huur-Tu Tuvan throat singers
Eddie Jobson - of UK, Frank Zappa, Roxy Music, Jethro Tull
Geoffrey Oryema
Fairport Convention
Keith Emerson Band
Adrian Belew Power Trio
Tony Levin
and amongst, many, many other interesting international acts:
Patti Smith!

The gig is a giant outdoor double-stage right below a hill with the Kazan Kremlin on top. But not with just the Kremlin overlooking the stage. There is also a very large Russian Orthodox Church and the largest mosque in Kazan.



Tatarstan is very interesting region. There is no way I could do any justice trying to explain all the dynamics and history. So go here for a rough outline:



History of Tatarstan - wiki



Basically there are Tatars and Russians here. We have heard various versions of the stories about how the two get along with each other. Or at least how their history has intertwined. So it is hard to get a completely clear picture.

It seems that the word "Tatar" means "alien". When these regions were conquered by the Russians, the various ethnic groups that were subsumed were called Tatars. But you have Tatars from the Urals, Tatars from the Volga area, Tatars from Mongolia and so on. So "Tatar" is a term used like the word "Indian" is used in the USA to group all of the various, pre-European North American peoples. Which means, at the end of the day, the word isn't really very useful. Except that the Tatars that we met were strikingly beautiful, with both European and Asian physical features.

Another interesting thing for me was the language. The Russian language is already very foreign to an American with its 33 Cyrillic letters. Some letters look and sound like English, while other look like English letters but make completely different sounds. The Tatar language has adopted the Cyrillic alphabet but added six more letters to flush out all the sounds they use. So that brings them to 39 letters.

Apparently they has been some very heavy work done to put many of the Tatar languages, that were only oral languages, into written form. The Cyrillic alphabet was chosen, of course, because Russian was the language of the controlling government. But there is now a movement being considered to change the Tatar language over to the Latin alphabet. This seems crazy to change a whole language to a new alphabet, but no one has asked for my opinion. Perhaps there are some very good reasons to separate from Russian.

- - -

Our sound check went very good today. The idea was for each band to get two hours on the big stage some time during the two days prior to the festival. This was critical because we are each only doing a 20 minute set and we only have 20 minutes of change over time between bands.

The sound was very, very good. So we are happy.

As of last week, I have admitted to myself that I am in the process of a complete re-wiring of my system. There seem to be five dimensions to this re-wiring. Perhaps there are others that I haven't quite noticed yet. Or, still, others ready to emerge. For now the list goes:

1. Aikido
2. JSBach and the Piano
3. Ancestral DNA
4. New Business Structures
5. New Playing Technique and New Instrument


Number Five – new instrument and new playing technique – This is the most oblique, because I don't have to space to take it on at the moment. However, the smell is in the air and I have had a enough of a taste that I can sense what the full meal could be like.

I am currently working with Mark Warr to re-build my Warr guitar as a horizontal instrument.

My preliminary research has shown me that the technique as it currently stands (the instrument being held like a guitar) has a relatively low ceiling. Due to the angles of the wrists, and the changes in those angles for every position along the fret board, the ability to play dynamically, and with fluidity, is extremely limited. Mark Warr confirmed this, for himself, within just a few minutes of setting up the instrument as I recommended. The dynamic range is expanded enormously, just with the simple action of turning the instrument horizontally and allowing the wrists to be smooth and straight in line with the forearms. In fact, the dynamic range is so expanded that it feels like going back to Kindergarten with this instrument.

I have been forced to this research by the simple fact that long term playing of this instrument is clearly not sustainable for me. Carpal tunnel, and what is known as tennis elbow, have become the nearly permanent condition of using my hands and arms. This is, also, inflamed by tapping away on computers and from carrying heavy bags around the world. Regardless, I am absolutely convinced that the current way of playing the Warr Guitar is destroying my body. At the very minimum, I know I won't be able to develop my playing over the next 15-30 years. It just isn't sustainable.

And even though I have been experimenting with this new way of horizontal playing for at least 7 years now, I haven't felt the urgency that I do now. Within just a two week period of taking it seriously (about six months ago), a whole new kind of relaxedness and presence emerged that I have not felt before.

I look forward to stepping up to this plate. But first…..

Number Four – new business structures – This is a combined process of contraction and expansion. The contraction part is a cutting back to the barest of minimums. Both financial and energy/time wise. The expansion part is an extending myself outwards in new forms.

The questions that come to me regarding contraction are:

How little can I spend to do everything that I need to do? Otherwise, not much can get financed.

What is the best use of my income generating energies? As many are discovering these days, where most of our energies go produces the least amount of income. This leaves me to ask the question "what can be cut away and still leave the needed amount of income coming in?" "Can I, literally, reduce my workload by 50% or more and still keep the same amount of money coming?" Otherwise…well… Since what truly interests me as an artist does not generate money at all, if I were to only organize my musical/professional life around cash flow, then I would be left with only the slogging work and no reward but cash. That is not how I want to spend the next 20 years of my life

What are the best business structures for me to grow my business in a way that frees me from running that business? Otherwise I am no longer a musician but a businessman. Case in point: this week was the first time in two months that I touched my guitar. I was very, very thankful for the session that came in! I have not been absent from producing music – mixing, mastering, and composing have been in my steady diet. But most of my time has been in managing my business, not playing music through the tips of my fingers.

The answer to some of these questions is to build more, and more appropriate, business structures. This is the expansion part. I have started a publishing company, a production company, a media label (post-record label structure), a digital download store and a music licensing structure. My hopes are to grow this completely out of my hands so I can get back to creating. However, at present, it is all in my hands.

Number Three – ancestral DNA – This is a longer story than can be told here. And much of it can't really be told at all. It is purely an inner experience. The inner experience of contact with the DNA of the past that makes Trey Gunn up. All the experiences of all of my relatives, alive or passed, I have begun to feel living in my cells.

In a modern sense we know that our cells and physical structures are grown out of the DNA that has been passed on to us. One portion of my makeup comes from my mother's mother. One portion comes from my father's grandmother. These two individuals I knew in my life, so I have a sense of them as living creatures. I know how they spoke and walked and dealt with the trials of life. Their physical quirks and traits are embedded within my own body. This is the case for all of my ancestors, known or unknown to me.

In the not so modern sense, what has become clearer and clearer over the last two years is that all of the experiences of their lives are also embedded in my flesh. Every feeling and thought my father's father had throughout his entire life is accessible inside my own body. Some of it operates on me above the level of my awareness and some of it below my awareness. I can hear his words, at times, come through my mouth under certain situations. I can feel something directly from my mother's mother at times. Looking at a fresh strawberry can spark her love of growing food in her backyard. Something I have never done.

These are simple and small examples, but make the point clearly. What we call the past, isn't quite just so. And what we call our own self, isn't quite just so. I have found this to be a deep, deep well when plunged into.

Through this work of uncovering what's getting passed on through my living ancestry, a very active process of participation with them has begun – right here and now.

Number Two – J.S. Bach and the piano – This began in the form of a piano entering my home. My son has been playing piano for several years now and is currently working with one of the most unlikely piano teachers one could imagine – Curt Golden of the Seattle Guitar circle. I have no real idea what they are doing, but I do know that I hear music (not just sound) coming out of my son and he is very driven to play.

When I moved into my current home, about a year ago, I had plans of getting us a real piano. Which I did. When it arrived and I first sat down to play, I had the remembering that the piano was my very first instrument, just over 40 years ago. I have gone through many instruments throughout my life, but here was a kind of grounding. I pulled out one of Bach's two-part inventions and began to peck away at it.

An incredible re-wiring of my whole system immediately began. Both physically and musically. The technique of using gravity to help the descending of the fingers upon the keys was so exciting compared to the forces of energies that are necessary to tap on the vertical version of the Warr Guitar. That alone got my blood flowing. But the music…! Living in a musical world that is, very much, based on repetition, the shock of this Bach piece was that every single phrase has it's own logic and shape. Every bar is completely unique and either leads forward to the next bar or resolves a question from the last bar. Or both at once!

I immediately began memorizing the piece and learning to play it without looking at my fingers or the keyboard. What a strange and stimulating experience this was. Internalizing all these new sensations AND turning them into a living music.

One of the first obstacles I ran into was forming, in my mind, the harmonic progressions and then misplaying the individual musical lines. Meaning, here we are in C minor and the bass is outlining the C minor chord. I am used to being able to just think of C minor and play it in any number of various ways depending on what I hear or feel at the moment. But, not this music. You have to play in a very specific way. And for very specific reasons due to the way the music is written. If you change one small thing it throws off something else. Either a fingering that is coming up is wrecked, or the melodic lines no longer work anymore.

And this is just the first step. As you progress with this, the next level opens up. And the next and the next…

Number One – Aikido – This is the most exciting for me, at the moment. I can't completely explain the excitement, either. I suppose it could be because Aikido is such a foreign world and I love delving into something new. It is, also, a world that my son and I are sharing. So, it is enlivening to be working on a new practice in consort with him. But also, because I don't have a young man's sense of ambitiousness -- I am just present in the moment with where I am in the Aikido process. Standing next to another beginner or training with 5 dan black belt, I find no urge to be more than what I am at the moment.

My son and I have been talking about Aikido since he was about seven (he is now almost eleven.) My original idea was that it could be something fun for us both to do together and meet some interesting people. I also knew that studying something like this can only be a positive influence on a child.

I suppose in my convictions about the future of this world it is very clear to me that having specific skills or storehouses of information inside your skull, is not quite the virtue it used to be when my father was growing up. The virtue of the future is adaptability and in understanding how you, as an individual, learns. Whatever skills my son is going to need to know as a man is nothing that I could teach him. Nor could he ever learn them at school. This is, in my view, because the skills he will need, probably, don't even exist at the moment. These skills would be created along the way, probably by him. So, the best way to become a flexible and adaptable human being (meaning, intelligent) is to learn as many different things as possibly while observing how you learn. And, the real secret to learning from a teacher is to stand near them while they are learning something.

So, part of my inner interest in Aikido was the idea that my son and I might do some real learning together.

It turns out that one of the great places for kids to study Aikido is just down the street from us. My son began going to classes several months before I did. We, both, got the best feeling in the dojo and he took to it immediately. The Sensei who runs it, Bruce Bookman, takes a strong position with the kids while, at the same time, making the whole thing quite fun. He has some other really great teachers who, both, push the kids and excite them at the same time.

I observed the kid's class for these months before I had the space the come to an adult's class. Aikido is a formal world. There is an etiquette to being in the dojo and an etiquette to how the participants engage with each other. I was happy to learn by watching the kids train for a while.

It only took one class for me to see the potential here. Firstly I love ritual and form, and Aikido is full of that. Class always begins and ends with the ritual of opening and closing to the history of the tradition and an acknowledgment of the teacher. Throughout the class a formal acknowledgment is, also, made with everyone you work with: a bow is given before you begin training with them and when you complete training with them. Also, if the teacher injects an instruction with the two of you, you make a formal bow after they are done. At the very end of the class everyone individually thanks everyone else.

I love all of that. It is an outward formalization of the inner convictions on this particular path.

Beyond the ritual and into the practice, I felt completely at home and incredibly challenged. With Aikido, at least at the level I am working at, you work in partners. One partner initiates the movement and the other receives the movement. Most times the movement is some kind of throw or some kind of pin. But the receiver is very active and determines, to a huge degree, how the whole flow proceeds.

The movements are very graceful, even when delivered with incredible force. Like tossing a grown man across the room and pinning them down. I find some of the moves incredibly beautiful. I am particularly drawn to one movement called nikyo, at the moment. This is a kind of wrist bend that, with very little movement or effort, you instantly bring your partner down to their knees and then flip them over to a combined elbow/shoulder pin.

I was quietly terrified of beginning Aikido practice at first, as my wrists and arms are incredibly tight and sore and sensitive from the trials of my professional life over the last 7 years. This particular move, nikyo, is a direct challenge to that part of my body. Somehow it is helping. My body is learning something direct from these movements.

This is practice with partners. You have to trust another individual to listen to your body and you have to take another's trust in order move them. This is not unlike playing music. Except you don't usually end up with a broken wrist if your bass player misses a beat!

One other point of fascination for me is that every move is mirrored by both halves of the body. At this dojo we do the move four times before changing roles. First with the left side, then the right side, then the left and then the right again. As a musician who has spent decades training my left and right halves to work in unison and interdependently, you would think this would be a breeze for me. But it's not. It is very challenging to learn a complicated movement with one side of the body and then flip it to the other side. For all practical purposes the learning of one side does not shift over to the other side simply because you wish it to. Of course, something is transmitted from one side to the other, but this must be learned as a separate practice. The practice of transmitting. Or so it seems to me, at this moment.

Extensive article about the Warr Guitar, it's development and my involvement with it, now in Premier Guitar Magazine online.

Go here for the article